magazine - Animation World Network

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May 1996
MAGAZINE
Vol. 1, No. 2
Women in Animation
WATCH OUT!!
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE
Volume 1, No. 2 – May 1996
Editor’s Notebook
by Harvey Deneroff
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by Aleksandra Korejwo
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Women in Animation and Bill Everson
ANIMATION WORLD NETWORK
6525 Sunset Blvd.,
Garden Suite 10
Hollywood, CA 90028
Phone : 213.468.2554
Fax :
213.464.5914
Email : info@awn.com
My Small Animation World
Polish animator Aleksandra Korejwo muses about life, animation, music, Disney and her salt of many colors.
Jim & Stephanie Graziano: An Interview by Harvey Deneroff
8
Jim and Stephanie Graziano have been behind some of the most successful TV shows around. Now DreamWorks has
got them. Harvey Deneroff reports.
Out of the Animation Ghetto:
Clare Kitson and Her Muffia
11
by Jill McGreal
Over the last few years, Channel 4 has helped put a new face on British animation. Jill McGreal reports how women
will lead the broadcaster into series television using the irreverent talents of Candy Guard and Sarah Ann Kennedy.
Rose Bond: An Animator's Profile
editor@awn.com
PUBLISHER
Ron Diamond, President
Dan Sarto, Chief Operating Officer
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Harvey Deneroff
ASSOCIATE EDITOR/PUBLICITY
Frankie Kowalski
CONTRIBUTORS :
Giannalberto Bendazzi
Christian Clark
Harvey Deneroff
Marcin Gizycki
Wendy Jackson
Aleksandra Korejwo
Frankie Kowalski
Neil McKee
William Mortiz
Linda Simensky
Rita Street
Le WEBMASTER
Guillaume Calop
DESIGN/LAYOUT :
Guillaume Calop
IMP Graphic
e-mail : imp_ecmp@club-internet.fr
ADVERTISING SALES
North America : Wendy Jackson
Europe :
Vincent Ferri
Asia :
Bruce Teitelbaum
by Rita Street
14
Independent animator Rose Bond is known for her use of mythology to explore the problems affecting humanity
today. Rita Street explores her philosophy, methodology and her new foray into computer-assisted animation.
Splendid Artists: Central And
East-European Women Animators
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Meena and Sara: Two Characters in
Search of a Brighter Future for Women by Neill McKee and Christian Clark
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by Marcin Gizycki
Communist propaganda about the role of women in and out of animation in the USSR, Poland and Czechoslovakia did
not always coincide with reality. Marcin Gizycki explains why and tells what has happened since then.
The United Nations is using animation as a means of social change in Asia and Africa. Neill McKee and Christian Clark
report from the field.
Women In Animation: Changing the
World: Person by Person, Cel by Cel by Rita Street
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The founder of Women in Animation reveals her personal odyssey in founding the organization.
Women in the Animation Industry
—Some Thoughts
27
by Linda Simensky
The Cartoon Network's Linda Simensky offers some personal observations on the ways women make it in today's
animation industry.
Mary Ellen Bute: Seeing Sound
by William Moritz
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Bill Moritz chronicles the work of pioneer experimental animator Mary Ellen Bute, whose films gained an unexpected
acceptance by both Hollywood and the public.
Claire Parker, An Appreciation
by Giannalberto Bendazzi
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Alexandre Alexeïeff usually gets the most of the credit for the pinscreen animation he did with his wife, Claire Parker.
Giannalberto Bendazzi, a friend of both, examines her role in their collaboration.
Film Reviews:
James And The Giant Peach
All Dogs Go To Heaven 2
Festival Review:
Cartoons on the Bay
Desert Island Series...
Women always have plenty to pack!!
by Wendy Jackson
by Frankie Kowalski
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38
by Giannalberto Bendazzi [English]40 [Italiano]42
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compiled by Frankie Kowalski
Our intrepid Desert Island maven queries some women in animation about their top 10 picks for an island getaway.
News
Preview of Coming Attractions
Cover: Pond Life, the Series
2
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Women in Animation
s several articles in this issue
point out, women have often
played a key role in animation.
Unfortunately, within the animation
industry itself, there remains a
dearth of directors and others in
key creative positions. While this is
starting to change, their participation
pales in comparison to the dominant
role they play among
independent animators,
whose
films
often
constitutes half the
offerings at major
international animation
festivals. This is where women have also
come into their own have been in the
executive ranks, both here and abroad.
Thus, this issue is devoted largely to
women in animation, it is not surprising
that we offer a selection of pieces by
and about independent animators Thus,
Poland's Aleksandra Korejwo, in her first
attempt at writing an article in English,
provides us with a startling
autobiographical essay, rich with poetry
and imagery, that attempts to explain
the sources of her inspiration.
Rita Street explores the evocative
films of Rose Bond, while William Moritz
profiles the popular, but now largely
forgotten pioneer experimental filmmaker,
Mary Ellen Bute, and Giannalberto
Bendazzi provides an appreciation of
Claire Parker, whose role in animation
history has often been subsumed to her
husband.
As Linda Simensky points out in her
article, "Women in the Animation Industry-Some Thoughts," the way women get
to the executive suite in today's
animation industry often differs markedly
from the way men get there. This is
clearly illustrated by my interview with
Jim and Stephanie Graziano, who both
came to be major players in television
animation by distinctly different routes.
Jill McGreal in her piece, "Out of the
Animation Ghetto," reports on how
women, in both the executive and
creative side of the business, are
transforming animation at Britain's
innovative Channel 4. Marcin Gizycki,
A
May 1996
meanwhile, explores the past and
present roles women have and
are playing in Russia, Poland
and
the
former
Czechoslovakia in his piece,
"Splendid Artists."
One of the more
exciting
and
useful
organizations around these
days is Women in
Animation.
Rita
Street, its founder
and
leader,
provides a
brief memoir
on what led
to its founding and explains its activities
and aims.
The way women have been
portrayed in animation has often been
a subject of concern in recent years, but
that is certainly not a problem with
regards to UNICEF's Meena and Sara
projects, which are being used to fight
destructive stereotypes seen in third
world countries. Neill McKee and Christian
Clark, who are both active in these
projects, report on them in "Meena and
Sara: Two Characters in Search of a
The way women have been
portrayed in animation has
often been a subject of
concern in recent years.
Brighter Future for Women."
Our focus on women in this issue
appropriately concludes with the
second of Frankie Kowalski's "Desert
Island Series."
New to this issue is our first set of
film reviews of James and the Giant
Peach and All Dogs Go To Heaven 2, by
Wendy Jackson and Frankie Kowalski, as
well as our first festival coverage from
Giannalberto Bendazzi, who reports on
Cartoons on the Bay, in Amalfi, Italy.
Bill Everson
always like to say that my interest in
film and animation stems from being
an industry brat, my father having
I
3
worked at Fleischer and Famous Studios
during the 1930s and 1940s. He was also
a film buff, who had the pleasant habit
of renting old silent films to show to
family and friends on Friday nights.
Although he died just before I turned 6,
my older brother and I both maintained
a strong interest in film; thus, at age 12,
he took me to a series of films at New
York's Museum of Modern Art, where I
imbibed such classics as Intolerance, All
Quiet on the Western Front and
Rashomon.
However, it wasn't until I happened
on the Theodore Huff Memorial Film
Society, run by William K. Everson, who died
on April 14, that my passion for films and
film going really started to take focus.
The Society, which in the 1950s held its
screenings in somewhat seedy meeting
halls that also hosted such events as
reunions of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
More importantly, it provided a place for
film buffs and scholars to meet, discuss
and argue film. In those days before
Cinema Studies became a respectable
academic discipline, the Huff Society was
key to the education of many a budding
cinéaste, myself included.
I need not go into a litany of Bill's
accomplishments or activities, which
including being a tenured professor of
cinema studies at New York University,
despite being a high school dropout.
Though animation was not his prime
focus, he was not averse to showing
Chuck Jones or Friz Freleng cartoons
before they became fashionable.
I recall the time he was on an
American Film Institute committee
evaluating my proposal to do an oral
history interview with animation pioneer
J.R. Bray; to his (and my) surprise, he was
the only one who knew who Bray was,
and essentially shamed the others into
approving my grant. For that and all the
other kindnesses he showed me and
others, I will always be grateful.
Harvey Deneroff
Editor-in-Chief
Animation World Magazine
May 1996
My Small Animation World
by Aleksandra Korejwo
Aleksandra Korejwo at her animation stand.
“I only hope that we never lose sight
of one thing—that it was all started by
a mouse.”
—Walt Disney
or me, it all started with salt.
Everybody knows salt. It is a
common material. But for
me, it is more than just salt. In
this material, I discovered my new
way for Art, my new way for animation. There were many years
F
of research and hard work. People often ask me, “How can you
do such difficult animation so
fast? It is impossible.” But I have
been working for this moment all
my life.
Before my great meeting with
animation, I studied painting. I
learned to play the violin and I
wrote poetry. My first thought
was to create unity between
painting, music and poetry. I
could see that it was possible in
animation art film. It was a great
event in my life. But it was not
enough just to know about it, I
wanted to do it.
I have been developing my
own technique for many years.
The most important thing was
finding the method of coloring
salt. I found it. It is a complicated
process, but the effect on film is
great.
The next task was finding special tools for my unique material.
It happened suddenly when I visited the zoo.
The Swan by Aleksandra Korejwo
4
I don’t like looking at animals
behind bars, but I know that
some animals need man’s protection. It was spring and the
bird’s feathers were dropping
down onto the grass. They were
long, strong feathers. I picked up
a few and said, “Thanks” to the
condors. After that, I formed the
feathers in many ways and I have
chosen the best ones, which I use
to this day. Sometimes, the direction of your search can lead you
to a surprise!
The Movement, The Color,
The Form
My search for unity between
painting, music and poetry
began during my studies at the
Academy of Fine Arts, where I did
a lot of short musical compositions “without music.” My belief
was that the music could exist
only in the viewer’s imagination.
Instead of from the sound, the
music appeared in the movement, the color, the form! People
said: “It is really colored music for
our eyes.”
At that time, I studied the
works of John Cage. I prepared
special scores for film, but I didn’t
note musical notes. I noted form,
color...they were my notes. I was
groping in the musical world, but
I knew intuitively that it was a
good way.
One day, something new
happened. I was showing my
film to a group of friends, but
they had decided to give me a
little surprise. When my film started, they switched on some music
(it was some old Greek music I
had never heard before). They
wanted to see what the effect
would be with my film. It was just
a joke pairing this casual music
with my silent film. My friends
(and I) were so surprised when
we could see that the synchronization was absolutely perfect!
My silent film became a
“sound” film; a great event from
the history of cinematography
was being repeated in my own
life.
From that moment, I began
The Travels of AKO
my new adventures with the
greatest classical music composers. I started creating films
with music. I “noted notes” and
translated them into frames. My
new scores were different than
before. In my silent films, I created only one musical line, for
movement. Now I had two lines:
music and movement. The most
important thing, was finding the
relationship between the two.
My belief was that the
music could exist only in
the viewer’s imagination.
Sometimes there was absolute
synchronization, but sometimes I
needed a counterpoint for a film
idea. I was learning to understand the composers’ ideas and
share my ideas with them. I tried
to be very humble and to, very
subtly, rediscover the composers’
personalities.
May 1996
My parallel life motif which I
was pursuing at this time, was to
create films for children.
Colored Changing Pictures
When I was a child, as my
family tells me, I used to watch
Disney films and I would paint
something like storyboards. My
Mother laughs: “You used to sit
on the floor and draw some rectangular frames with colored
changing pictures inside.” At that
time, my Grandpa sent me a lot
of coloring books with Disney
characters. I loved Disney’s “soft
animation.”
When I think about Walt Disney, I know that he felt movement. His characters really lived
in his imagination. I believe the
most important thing in animation is to feel movement.
Therefore, before I start with
a film, I always work around the
film. I paint a lot, I make drawings to find the best movement
for each element. I like to study
movement in nature. I prepare
my special scores for films, of
course. I change my psyche and
my mind for new movement in
a new film. I work with my camera “face to face,” it is very important to have movement in mind.
Before I started with my first
children’s film, The Travel of AKO, I
had thought about making a
series for children. Disney was my
inspiration, and I wanted to make
films just like he did. The Travels
of AKO is about three friends. The
first looks like a yellow circle and
is a very happy, optimistic “person”; the second, which is a blue
triangle, is an enthusiastic,
reserved, cold person; and the
last is a very active and sometimes
nervous person with a pink,
square form. They appear and disappear, transforming into other
5
forms—good play for children.
Fairyland in Salt
Kids often visit me in my studio when I do my animation.
They love to play with me and
create forms from fairyland in salt.
When I was making my next
film for children about seven little
colored ducks (from Julian
Tuwim’s poem, “Hard Calculation”), I studied ducks walking in
the country. My idea was to transmit from the screen to the child a
visual knowledge of color theory, the process of additive and
subtractive mixing of colors,
through a good, humorous story.
The most important thing in
animation is to feel
movement.
I was pleased when the organizers of the International Animation Festival in Annecy, France,
invited my film to the event.
Later, I came back to making
films for music, especially classical music. In 1989, I made The
Weaver to the music of Stanislaw
Moniuszko, for which I received
the Award for Animation from the
Association of Polish Filmmakers.
After that, I made The Swan to
the music of Camille Saint-Saëns.
The idea for this film was born in
Annecy, during the Festival,
where I sketched swans gesturing near the lake. As I walked
along the canals in this pretty
Eine Kleine Nachtmusic —Romanze Andante
town, I was fascinated by the
pure white, majestic birds.
In my film, I wanted to
achieve absolute perfect synchronization between music and
painting. My film would also synchronize the ballet of a swan and
a young girl.
I had to be a choreographer
as well. Many ballerinas say The
Swan is the most difficult composition for ballet. For this film, I
received two awards: The Special
Prize for Perfect Transposition of
Music Into Pictures given by the
Jury of the Festival of Films for
Children and Young People in
Poznan, Poland (1992) and
Grand Prix for the Best Animation
Film (Under 10 minutes) given by
the International Jury of the Festival of Animation Films in Shanghai (1992).
At the Shanghai festival, I met
many people from around the
world, and many famous animation personalities. At that time I
became an ASIFA member.
My next projects were the
films, Ave Maria to music by Schubert and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik—
Romanze Andante to music by
Mozart.
I had to draw very fast
because the horses wanted
to eat my drawings.
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was a
film about the sometimes sorrowful life of Mozart. After the
filming, I too, experienced sorrow, when it was discovered that
all of the film had been overexposed due to a problem in the
camera. I had to start all over
again, but it was not the same
film. In my technique, I animate
directly under the camera; I
destroy the first picture to create
May 1996
the second. When I finish, all that
remains is the dirty salt on the
floor. The life of the material exists
only in movement, and only for a
few minutes, but I hope it
remains forever in the imagination of the audience.
My next film was Exultate Jubilate Alleluja (Hallelujah), also to the
music of Mozart, followed by On
the Beautiful Blue Danube to the
music of Strauss. For this film the
On the Beautiful Blue Danube
organizers of the International
Animation Film Festivals in Canada, Portugal and France invited
my film to their festivities.
Hollywood,
The Soul Of Film
After my film was shown in
Annecy (France) a man came up
to me and said; “Congratulations”—It was Ron Diamond from
Acme Filmworks in Hollywood.
We began talking, I didn’t listen to
anything else during that evening
... Hollywood always makes me
think of the soul of film—and
Walt Disney, of course.
I was excited about the possibility of working in Hollywood,
but I didn’t believe it could really
happen until Ron called me.
Now, I know that he is a brilliant
manager and producer. He
found me work that was very
well suited to my personality. I
6
would make four films for the
Austin Lyric Opera in Texas.
There were four 30 second
commercials to Opera music: La
Traviata, Tannhäuser and Lucia di
Lammermoor. I had to chose 30
seconds from each of these
operas for the films. Many ideas
appeared in my mind. I think, I
chose the best parts for my technique.
Now, when I think about my
good fortune in meeting Diamond, I am reminded of my aunt
who inspired me to create the
film On the Beautiful Blue Danube.
She was interested in my films.
When I visited her, she would
pour coffee for me in a very pretty cup with a beautiful, delicate
design on it and we would talk
about my films. She became very
ill and on the last night before
her death, she gave me that pretty cup for memory. That cup
became a film star.
I often think about the parallels between my life and my films.
Perhaps, one day I will make a
live-action film about these parallels.
Synchronizing
With My Life
Every film has a different story
and synchronizes with my own
life. My most recent film project
(a three-part collection from the
Bizet opera Carmen: Carmen Suite,
Carmen-Habanera and Carmen
Torero) was born in a little town in
Spain called Huesca. The International Film Festival there had
invited me and my film. I could
feel the warm Spanish sunlight
on my face and also in my heart.
I saw fiestas which took place in
the moonlight. In the morning, I
observed the sun above the
brown-red Spanish land. Of
course, before I started making
the films, I studied the Spanish
flamenco dance.
Also, before I started on the
first Carmen film, I lived on a
ranch. Everyday, I made lots of
drawings among the horses. My
lovely horses used to come to me
and look at my drawings or paintings as if they were mirrors. It was
very funny for me and I think for
them also. I had to draw very fast
because the horses (especially
one of them) wanted to eat my
drawings.
My professor from the Academy of Fine Arts used to say, “Keep
your sketchbook in your pocket
always.” I try to make sketches
every place I go. It is my principle. I keep my flipbook in my
pocket.
I am very happy that I can participate in animation festivals, that
I can travel to other countries.
There are many places for interesting, sometimes surprising
meetings with wonderful, sensitive people who are making art
films more and more beautiful.
There is one heart of animation art shared by all film directors, animators, cameramen,
good producers and enthusiastic
people who love animation film.
Each animation festival
impresses my mind and heart
with a deep sign.
I try to note these impressions
with drawings and write them
down. When the last Annecy festival ended, I wrote a short
impression:
“The day after the end of the
Annecy Festival: I am sitting on a
bench at the side of a lake. Only
the swans are unchanged. The
surroundings get altered, decorations change, the water in the
canals has fallen low. People are
walking faster. Trucks, cruising the
park, make noise. Even pigeons
May 1996
are more uneasy and are looking
inquiringly.
“Only the swans are swimming quietly certain of their presence. My heart is full of conversations and animated forms. I am
breathing the presence of people I saw (maybe it was too short
to understand, too short to
remember). Yet I can still observe
the animation of life. The animated film is going on.
“The swan as question marks,
maybe it is enough to sail along
the route of God?”
The Ocean of Life
This story is only a little drop in
the ocean of life. My life and work
really makes me think of the
ocean. Maybe every film is just
like one wave? Always the same
rhythm, but a different story, a
different, unusual sound and
form.
When I was teaching students
at the Academy of Fine Arts they
asked me, “You very often make
films around ballet, dance, opera;
what is the most interesting area
for you?” My answer is, “Every
moment is unusual for me. How
amazing is movement in nature.
I observe it often and I find ideas
of the harmony in it. There is an
incredible dialogue between creating shapes, sounds and movements.
“It is a great play of many
instruments, of many feelings.
The fantastic combination is joyful and sorrowful, dramatic and
humorous—the true poetry of
life. I feel like I am just one element from that composition, from
that landscape. My body speaks
the same language, which is
sometimes called dance, ballet or
pantomime.”
And all the time, I am looking
for the point of meeting between
poetry, movement, music and
painting. I see that point not only
in music films, not only in ballet or
other dance, not only in opera. I
see that point everyday in my life.
When I walk across the meadow,
when I look at the ocean, and at
the noisy intersection.
I think the most important
thing is to be able to observe
movement in its variety and still
learn by looking at the world
through artists’ and children’s
eyes.
Alexsandra Korewjo
is a filmmaker based in Poznan, Poland.
Carmen Habanera
7
May 1996
Jim & Stephanie Graziano:
An Interview
by Harvey Deneroff
ast November, Jeffrey Katzen- Spielberg was known for his
berg asked Jim and Stephanie hands on involvement in these
Graziano to head up produc- shows, which is likely to continue
tion for Dreamin the new venture. (In
Works’ new televiaddition, former Disney
sion animation diviTelevision Animation
sion. While the offer
President Gary Krisel has
was not surprising,
been brought in to
given the Graziano’s
oversee the whole
track record, what
operation.)
was surprising is
Stephanie Graziano
how readily they
explained that, We had
accepted. After all,
three previous offers to
their
company,
buy the studio, but
Graz
Entertainnone of them made
ment, noted for
any sense. DreamWorks
such hit shows as
was the first case where
X-Men and The Tick,
we were offered things
Stephanie Graziano that we were lacking as
was one of the
© Graz Entertainment
hottest studios in
a small studio.
town.
There was also the fact
DreamWorks Television Ani- that it was a startup,
mation is the newest and so far which is always exciting,
least clearly defined of Dream- and that we could work
Works SKG, Hollywood’s newest together. That was really a
super studio. The division’s man- big part of it.”
date extends beyond only televiDespite being one of
sion to also include direct-to-video Hollywood’s most sucproductions and interactive ani- cessful animation couples,
mation. The operation itself falls Jim
and
Stephanie
under the aegis of Steven Spiel- Graziano have not been
able to work together as
much as they would like. In fact,
We actually have different
Jim had just returned to Graz after
mind sets, but they end up
a three year stint at Universal Carcomplementing each other.
toon Studios when DreamWorks
came along. Their longest stint
berg, whose previous TV efforts in together was not at Graz, but at
collaboration with Warner Bros. Marvel Productions, where they
(Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, met (in 1984) and married (in
Pinky and the Brain, etc.) helped rev- 1988)—he was Senior Vice Presiolutionize broadcast animation. dent of Production and she
L
8
worked under him as a producer.
Why Would We
Even Want to Do It
“People often ask us,”
Stephanie says, “about how we
work together, or why we would
even want to do it. But we really
are at our best working together.
We actually have different mind
sets, but they end up complementing each other.”
She explains that, “I come from
the creative side, while Jim comes
more from the technical end. So,
in trying to find solutions to problems, we realize that not every person is the same. Some artists are
better dealt with in a creative fashion, while others
are better dealt
with in a technical
fashion. What we
try to do is weigh
these situations
and
decipher
which direction
would be more
appropriate.”
This difference
also translates into
Jim Graziano
different strengths
vis-à-vis their roles atGraz. “When
we started Graz,” Stephanie notes,
“we opened it with three work for
hire series. I did all of the administrative work and Jim actually ran
the studio. At that point, because
it was really a function of his getting the production going, it was
perfect. After the first six months,
when he went to Universal and I
May 1996
X-Men, Red Dawn episode
© Saban Entertainment
took over the studio, the timing
couldn’t have been more perfect.
The company had reached a point
where it needed to start going
after other properties and production deals. And that isn’t what
he does. Jim really does more of
the day-to-day management and
talent recruiting, while I’m better at
making acquisitions and trying to
build relationships with distributors and creators.”
From Different Directions
Both Jim and Stephanie were
to get “a real job.” As his father
was a film editor with his own
company, he “knew how to pop
track and do a lot of other things.
So, I got a job at Warner Bros. as
an apprentice editor,” eventually
becoming “a full fledged editor.”
After he worked with Friz Freleng
putting together such compilation
films as Daffy Duck’s Fantastic Island,
he was hired in 1984 as studio
production manager at Marvel
Productions, where he stayed until
1991, eventually becoming Senior
Vice President of Production.
Despite being one of Hollywood’s most successful animation
couples, Jim and Stephanie Graziano have not been able to
work together as much as they would like.
born and raised in the Los Angeles area, but they came into animation and animation management from different directions.
For his part, Jim had bummed
around a few years after graduating from the University of Idaho
in 1975, where he had gone on
a football scholarship (playing tight
end) and majored in Physical Education. In 1978, he finally decided
Those were Marvel’s “big years,”
Jim recalls, “when they did The
Transformers, Muppet Babies and My
Little Pony.”
On the other hand, Stephanie’s
entry into animation was (for a
woman) more conventional. In
1972, right after high school, she
got a job as an inker at HannaBarbera. She earned an A.A.
degree in Advertising from Los
9
Angeles Valley College, and went
on to UCLA to study Fine Arts, all
while continuing to work in animation. She recalls that, “I was at
a point in the business where it
was thriving. I was freelancing for
two or three places, while working during the day at Hanna-Barbera. It became such a lucrative
situation that I thought, ‘Well, I
can always go back to school!’”
She left college and decided to
“pursue various avenues and tried
to become more versatile.” She
became an ink and paint supervisor at Ruby-Spears, while, on her
own, learned all she could about
camera and editing.
At this time, American studios
were beginning to send ink and
paint to Asia in an effort to cut
costs. She “did not really want the
work to go over there, but I knew
that it was going to happen and
wanted to know exactly what they
were capable of.” Thus, she “volunteered three or four times to go
overseas to set up shows for
them.”
Stephanie became studio manager for Tom Carter, before going
to Marvel in 1984 as a production
manager. Two years later, she got
her first producing assignment
(The Humanoids), and then started
working in development with Margaret Loesch.
The Land Before Time 2
© MCA/Universal Home Video
The Tick
© Sunbow Entertainment
When Loesch left to start the
Fox Children’s Network, Stephanie
went along as Director of Animation Programming and Production. When Jim started Graz in
1992, she stayed on at Fox, but
helped him out with administrative tasks in her spare time. After
Jim went to Universal, Stephanie
stepped in to run Graz full-time.
Expanding the Studio
At Universal, Jim oversaw production on such shows as
Beethoven, Shelly Duvall’s Bedtime Stories and Earthworm Jim, along with
three made-for-video sequels to
The Land Before Time. Meanwhile,
Graz, under Stephanie’s direction,
expanded from a studio for hire
to the point where it had an ownership interest in half of its projects,
as well as expanded into such
areas as home videos (Cathy),
video games (Shadoan) and TV
commercials.
May 1996
By last year, Graz had reached
their long term goal of having an
ownership interest in half their productions (with the other half being
done on a for hire basis).
Stephanie states that, “I didn’t really see it getting too much bigger,
or it probably wouldn’t have been
as enjoyable in the same way. I
really anticipated it’s future being
more of a maintenance base than
a growth base.”
At the same time, the animation market was also changing, as
the industry was becoming
increasingly dominated by the
major studios. As a result,
Stephanie says, “it will be interesting to see how small, independent studios who want to retain
ownership survive in a market,
where the big guys want to own
everything. It was something that
I really couldn’t analyze at Graz,
but it was something interesting
to consider.”
Jim concurs, feeling that while
Graz would have been able to
maintain its work flow and perhaps “grown a bit,” but wonders
what would have happened, with
“all the big guns really gearing
up.”
For the Grazianos, their new
position means stepping up from
modest budgets set by clients, to
dictating their own budgets and
schedules. However, they plan to
continue the same creator friendly approach that had contributed
so much to Graz’ success. In this,
the Grazianos are part of a new
generation of studio managers
who have transformed the creative environment. As such, they
have helped television animation,
especially, turn away from the factory approach initially heralded by
10
the likes of Hanna-Barbera in the
early days of Saturday morning
animation.
At Graz, there was a conscious
effort to cast each artist for each
show, while encouraging interaction between the crew in order to
promote greater creativity. Stephanie notes that their new studio
will be planned with “production
units that will be defined by, in
almost all cases, individual offices
on the exterior. In almost all cases,
individual offices, with a living
room setting in the center. That
will act as a meeting place, a communications center, with screening capabilities, that will encourage people to interact together
and be part of a team.” (It’s interesting to note, in this regard, as
Jim points out that, “there are no
titles within any division of DreamWorks.”)
It will be interesting to see
how small, independent
studios survive in a market
where the big guys want to
own everything.
Given the fact that no shows
have yet been given the green
light at DreamWorks Television Animation, it is too early to tell how
the new operation will fare. But
given its all-star management line
up—including Jim and Stephanie
—it is an operation which in many
ways seems to have everything
going for it.
Harvey Deneroff, in addition to his
duties as Editor of Animation
World Magazine, edits and publishes The Animation Report, an
industry newsletter, which has taken
over operation of the annual Ojai Animation Conference.
May 1996
Out of the Animation Ghetto:
Clare Kitson and Her Muffia
by Jill McGreal
nimation moves around
the globe finding the
right conditions of production and digging in for the
duration. At various times, and
for various reasons, the best
work has to come out of America,
Canada,
Eastern
Europe...wherever the climate
permitted.
Sometime in the eighties it
landed in Britain, where animators began to produce increasingly confident work resulting in
the recent run of international
prizes. At the recent Pre-Selection
Committee for the Zagreb World
Festival of Animated Film, now
thankfully back on form after a
rocky war-torn patch, there
were 450 entries to the competition section, of which 133
were from Britain—by far the
largest number for any one country.
The standard of this work was
high and the range of subject
matter, techniques and individual
styles stretched across the board.
There were robust showings of
experimental, political, personal
and narrative work commissioned
or produced by a host of national and local funding bodies.
It’s an interesting time for any
filmmaker to be at work in the UK.
In the past decade and a half,
along with other Western democracies, we have, according to the
pundits, entered a new post-modern era. In Britain, this era was
ushered in by Thatcherism in
1979, where the population is still
held in the moral grip of its rightwing politics of conviction—
A
despite the succession of
scandals, resignations,
sackings, by-election
losses and a distinct
change in the political atmosphere.
But not all of the
social change of the
last decade has
been for the
worse. The trickle down effect
of the 1974
Sexual
Discrimination
Act
began to speed up as
the eighties-style ideologies
promoted
individualism wherever it came from—postfeminism arrived as
Dolly Pond part of the post-modfrom Pond Life
ern package.
Deregulation of the public service sector—a Thatcherite imperative and definitive of the pattern
of social change in the UK over
the past decade—started in a
small way when Channel 4
began transmitting on November
2, 1982; it was a daring move,
which increased the number of
television channels available in the
UK from three to four!
Animation for Adults
The channel’s mandate to
deliver innovative work to specialized audiences was interpreted
generously and, as part of a wider
scheduling experiment, animation
for adults was given its own commissioning department. It’s impossible not to link this development
with the growth of animation in
11
the UK; indeed, Channel 4’s role in
the benign circle of funding and
stimulation of talent has been recognized at all levels.
Narrative is no longer the
province of male
filmmakers—if it ever was.
Channel 4’s Commissioning
Editor for Animation, Clare Kitson,
continues to commission difficult
but award-winning work, much
of which has been directed by
women. For reasons adequately
covered elsewhere, and especially in Jayne Pilling’s introduction to
her book, Women and Animation
(BFI, 1992), animation has always
been able to accommodate
women. So, the present animation boom in the UK, taking place
in a late 20th century climate
which is generally more supportive of women, has sustained
many female directors.
Over the last few years,
women have worked in every
genre: personal—Karen Watson’s
Daddy’s Little Piece of Dresden China
(1988) and her new film Sweet
Heart (1995) address the issues of
childhood sexual abuse and
anorexia from an autobiographical point of view; lyrical—Susan
Young’s Carnival (1985), Karen
Kelly’s Egoli (1989) and Stressed
(1994); documentary—Marjut
Rimminen’s Some Protection (1987),
the Leeds Animation Workshop’s
Through the Glass Ceiling (1995)
both to do with the treatment of
women, in prison in Rimminen’s
film and at work in the Leeds film;
experimental—as in Vera Neuebauer’s The World of Children (1984)
or her Lady of the Lake (1995);
abstract—Erica Russell’s Feet of
Song (1989) and Triangle (1995);
narrative without dialogue—Joan
Ashworth’s The Web, Alison Snowden’s Second Class Mail (1984); narrative with dialogue—Sarah Ann
Kennedy’s Nights (1992) or any of
Candy Guard’s many short films.
Kitson’s Muffia
Narrative is no longer the
province of male filmmakers—if it
ever was. Certainly, when Kitson’s
budget was increased in 1994
and she modified her policies to
include series work, she felt that
only Sarah Ann Kennedy and
Candy Guard were able to write
dialogue and structure narrative
sufficiently well to move forward
in this direction. As a result of this
bold move, Kitson has been
accused, unfairly, of running a
‘Muffia’; but, in fact, her decision
to move into series production, a
program space previously occupied exclusively by producers of
children’s programming, has once
again extended the boundaries
of animation.
May 1996
that Kitson’s irritation is only halfconcealed when she notes that
the BBC has now also started
commissioning adult animation
series.
Pond Life
Kitson’s real move forward is
into mainstream comedy and out
of the animation ghetto. She has
been so successful that she will
now have to watch her back for
product-hungry comedy commissioning editors straying onto
her patch. Neither Crapston Villas
nor Candy Guard’s Pond Life are
Grand Prix winners at traditional
animation festivals like Annecy or
Zagreb—the source of many
awards, honors and prizes for
Channel 4. But both Kennedy and
Guard have expressed a desire to
move into live action. Animation
is perhaps, for both, a route
Animation is perhaps, for
both, a route through the
glass ceiling.
In gratitude Crapston Villas,
Kennedy’s model animation series
about the flat-dwelling inhabitants
of a run down Victorian house in
a seedy London street, won Best
New Program in the 1996 Broadcast Awards (Broadcast is a major
British trade magazine), and for
the first time, animation went up
against live action and won—a
major coup for Kitson and Channel 4. It’s unsurprising, therefore,
through the glass ceiling.
Candy Guard has been working on Pond Life since 1992, when
the pilot, I Want a Boyfriend ... Or
Do I?, was co-commissioned by
S4C and Channel 4. The 13 x 11
minute series premieres on Channel 4 later this year. Kitson put the
Pond Life concept into research
before giving the series the green
light. “When results of the
research came back,” Kitson said,
sounding surprised, “the male
12
participants had identified Pond
Life as to do with ‘women issues,’
whereas I believe that the issues
that Candy addresses are universal.”
Kitson was being disingenuous. The issues—career, driving
test, clothes, friends, rock music,
holidays—are universal, but the
tale on them is assuredly not—
women may go awkward, silent
and tongue-tied the minute they
think a bloke fancies them (see I
Want A Boyfriend ... Or Do I?), but
men get loud, show off and
clown about in front of the girl
they fancy ... (Or do they?).
Not that Guard thinks of herself as a feminist. “It’s not a word
that I use about myself. I’m much
more likely to describe myself as a
socialist,” is her initial response to
my question; but knowing that I
will ask her if she is a feminist,
Guard has consulted her boyfriend
on the matter, who
clearly thinks she is
one—“Because I
get cross about
things,” she says. “I
get especially cross
about
women’s
role in the film
industry, both as
actresses and creators. Taking sex
Pond Life
scenes,
for
instance, in which male directors
forever have women bouncing
up and down on top of the male
actors, presumably so that you
see their tits better. Even in Toy
Story, which I really enjoyed, I felt
the filmmakers could have tried
harder. Why did all the toys have
to be male?”
Guard respects Kitson’s judgment although she doesn’t necessarily always agree with it. In
fact, when her friend and col-
Crapston Villas
The dialogue sparkles with
smut and filth—so it’s more
British.
league, Sarah Ann Kennedy, was
commissioned to make Crapston
Villa before Pond Life got to go
ahead, Guard confesses to being
dismayed. Crapston Villas offers a
different kind of humor than Pond
Life. It’s more lavatorial—the dialogue sparkles with smut and
filth—so it’s more British and perhaps, for that reason, easier to
commission.
A More Daring
Kind of Comedy
Guard likens her work to
American series like Roseanne,
Friends, and Ellen. And it’s true that
Pond Life, which centers on the
angst-ridden life of Dolly Pond,
explores issues in a more personal way than Crapston Villas, where
the humor is spread across a
broader social canvas. And, as is
well known, the British can poke
May 1996
fun at the idiosyncrasies of their
class system, but they get coy
about showing their emotions. In
this sense Pond Life takes a step forward into a more daring, international kind of comedy.
What Pond Life and Crapston Villas share is attitude to women’s
issues in which female desire is
OK and political correctness is a
thing of the past. Crapston, in particular, revels in the shagging culture of the nineties. Take, for
instance, this slice of dialogue
from Episode 3. Marge, the late
thirty-something mum, who lives
at the top of Crapston Villas with
her delinquent, glue-sniffing children and senile old mum, is having a telephone conversation with
her black female friend, Denise.
They are both smoking and drinking:
Denise: “What you need is a
good shag” (laughter). Marge:
“Yeah, I quite fancy a handyman
(gales of laughter). I’ve got a few
odd jobs that need doing (shrieks
of laughter). I don’t care what he
looks like as long as he can screw
a few things in for me (more
Shrieks). I’ll advertise for an odd
job man preferably with a large
tool” (more shrieks). Denise: “Or
what about, ‘caffolders wanted,
quick erection only, site in desperate need of attention,’” (collapse into hysterical laughter).
Scaffolders wanted, quick
erection only, site in
desperate need of
attention.
Pond Life takes a different route
into equally taboo subjects as
Dolly Pond pours out her neuroses to anyone who will listen.
But neither series is afraid of representing women. The moral high
13
ground, once occupied by firstgeneration feminists, in which all
representation was offensive, has
given way to feistier generation
of women who have more selfesteem and are, therefore, less
fearful of their self-image, and less
moralistic and judgmental in their
attitudes to their own sex.
Guard certainly doesn’t think
of herself as a feminist filmmaker,
at least not consciously. On the
other hand, it wouldn’t have been
possible for her to write Pond Life
for a central male character. “So,
in fairness, you can’t really blame
men for writing scripts with strong
male leads,” she remarks confidently. She wonders, though,
whether Pond Life would have
been made if the Commissioning
Editor at Channel 4 had been a
man...a question which thankfully, we are not able to answer.
Crapston Villas
Jill McGreal is an animation
producer at Code Name: The
Animation Agency, in Hampshire, England.
May 1996
Rose Bond:
An Animator's Profile
by Rita Street
Director and Animator, Rose Bond
’ve always drawn horses,” says
the reserved yet captivating
Rose Bond, an award-winning
animator from Portland, Oregon.
“Teachers picked out my horse
drawings to hold up. In kindergarten, at a back-to-school night,
all my horse drawings were up
on one board—which I thought
was a little unfair to the other
children.” But no matter how
embarrassed she might have
been for being singled out,
Bond remembers with fondness
the affect it had on her mother.
When she walked in the room
and saw Rose’s drawings, Bond’s
mother sighed and said, “Oh,
those horses!”
Mrs. Bond’s reaction is one
that has been shared by many
when first introduced to her
daughter’s animated shorts.
Bond’s horses have a mythical
I
presence, as if they reside at
once between two planes—the
Bond’s horses have a
mythical presence, as if they
reside at once between two
planes ...
reality we know and the reality
of Faerie. Bond’s major films are
based on the myths and legends
of pre-Christian Ireland, a time
when the world of Faerie and
the powers of witchcraft were
considered a part of every day
life.
Says Bond of her stories, “The
pre-Christian Irish had a very
non-Western pantheon of gods.
They believed you could be
walking past a hillside and if it
happened to be the hundredth
day past a certain stage of the
14
moon, for instance, you could
slip into another dimension. For
them there was little difference
between gods and mortals.”
Bond also emphasizes a strong
connection for the early Irish
between humans and nature, a
connection that allows for shape
shifting and metamorphosis, a
process that Bond has always
been drawn to animate.
But Bond’s films are about
more than just beautiful horses
changing into other animal
forms. They address universal
topics affecting humanity today
through legends of the past.
Bond’s oeuvre questions the
importance of a dominate system of power. Should men rule
over women? Should women
rule over men? Is there another
middle-ground or middle-way?
The Light of Inspiration
In her epic trilogy of three
Irish legends, Cerridwen’s Gift,
Deirdre’s Choice
© Paint-on-Film Animation by Rose Bond, 1995
(1987), Mallacht Macha (or
Macha’s Curse, 1990) and Deirdre’s
Choice (1995), heroines struggle
with a world that is shape shifting itself, moving from a matriarchal to patriarchal base. The
white witch Cerridwen, whose
daughter is pure and bright,
attempts to bestow the light of
inspiration upon her troubled
and disagreeable son. Her
potion boils in a cauldron for
one year, but just as it is ready, it
bubbles over and splatters the
lips of her servant boy. Enraged,
thinking that the boy has spoiled
the potion, Cerridwen begins a
marvelous chase after the frightened servant, in which both
change shapes between animals
of land, sea and sky. The boy
makes the unwitting mistake of
shifting into the form of a small
seed which Cerridwen, in the
shape of a hen, promptly eats.
The seed grows in her belly until
she bears a child that has the
glow of inspiration on his brow.
When the child grows to manhood and becomes known as
May 1996
the womb is Druidpredicted to be
trouble for the
King. To show his
might over even
the Fates, the King
decrees that when
the girl grows up
he will take her for
his own. But,
when
Deirdre
comes of age, she
falls in love and
escapes with her
lover on a long pilgrimage through
35mm Film frames from Mallacht Macha (Macha’s Curse) distant lands. They
© Paint-on-Film Animation by Rose Bond, 1990 are finally discovprophet he remembers Cerrid- ered by the King who has the
wen, the mother of knowledge lad slain. Deirdre becomes the
who delivered upon him the King’s woman, but to show her
light of the world.
power over even his authority,
In Macha’s Curse, the goddess she takes her own life.
appears in the form of a gray
mare and discovers a handsome Something Magical,
man living alone in her woods. Something Eternal
She takes on human form and
Each film depicts a struggle
weds the man, but bids him for the right to “be,” for the right
never say anything of it to other to live freely, for the ultimate
mortals. At a festival, the man power that is in every woman,
boasts that his wife can run and every man, to stand on
faster than all the horses of the equal ground and declare, “In
King. Insulted, the King arrests me is something magical, somethe man and sends his men to thing eternal.” Bond declared
find the offensive woman, the just such a right in her own life
goddess Macha, who is now by steadfastly allowing herself
pregnant by her man. The King the privilege to grow as an artist.
demands that the woman, even
In college she had struggled
in her burdened condition, run with art. Her creative passions
against his horses. Macha does ran deep, but she found no
so and wins the race but curses mentor to guide her through the
the men of the village for nine reality of becoming a profesgenerations with the weakness sional so she set her art aside.
of a mother in labor. It is their
“I was very disenchanted
just due for choosing a “king’s with college. I had no role modmight over a mother’s right.”
els. It seemed that the only way
And in the most recent short, to succeed as an artist was to be
Deirdre’s Choice, a girl child still in an academic. I simply didn’t
15
understand how a career in art
worked. It wasn’t until my late
twenties when I took an animation night course at NorthWest
Film Center that discovered
where drawing could go.”
Even though she was working a full-time job as an educational administrator, she began
to work at night on her animated films. Finally the urge to fill
in her own gaps of knowledge
as a filmmaker led her to follow
her heart and return to school.
She took a leave
without pay and
attended the School
of the Art Institute of
Chicago to complete
her MFA. As she
says, “my art was
calling.”
At
Art
School she finished
Macha and created a
film
installation
called The Peep Show
at the Name Gallery.
Says Bond, The
Peep Show was a take
off on the porno
booth where you
step in a small dark
room, put in your
quarter and see a
show. In a three
minute cycle, she animates from
A New View of a Women’s Body—
presenting a revolutionary view
on the female sexual arousal
with the cycled engorgement of
an intricate maze of tissues and
capillaries; an interior felt but
never seen.
A Very Avant-Garde
Approach
After graduation, Bond
returned to her work with the
May 1996
Portland Public Schools, but
added the role of animation
instructor at Northwest Film Center to her list of professional
duties. Today, Bond takes a very
avant-garde approach to her
classwork, teaching students the
basics of squash and stretch, but
asking them to apply this knowledge to non-traditional forms of
animation. Bond, a “direct” animator, encourages experimentation in all forms, including
work with computers.
The Peep Show was a take
off on the porno booth
where you step in a small
dark room, put in your
quarter and see a show.
master. To ink, I use a mixture of
pens and watercolors. There’s a
type of German pen I like as well
and then I use on alcohol base
dye for my warm palette.”
But, Bond is now interested
in trying her painterly animation
process on the computer.
She is dabbling with Fractal
Design’s Painter software,
which allows for the look
and feel of a real painter’s
toolset within the digital format. In a sense the computer seems to fit with the new
era of work Bond hopes to
move in to.
“No more trilogies,” she
says. “I’m at a period of my
life where I’m reconsidering
where I’m going with my
personal work. My inclination
is to go back away from
story. Not exactly pure visual
poetry, but something more
“Stone Man” Rock Art Animation experimental, something that
from Sacred Encounters installation
© Rose Bond, 1995 leaves an impression.”
And knowing Bond, that
Says Bond, “I create my ani- impression is sure to be “lasting.”
mation in flipbooks, then ink
each page directly onto clear
film leader. After I ink the whole
film, and I usually have very little
cutting, I end up with a big roll
of about 400 feet with frame
lines marked on it. Then I color Rita Street, the founder of Women
in Animation and former editor and
it. I never project that, I just take
publisher
of Animation Magazine,
it straight to the lab which prints
each frame two to three times is now a freelance writer based in Los
Angeles.
[Bond animates at 12 frames per
second] and that becomes the
16
May 1996
Splendid Artists:
Central And East-European
Women Animators
by Marcin Gizycki
n the realm of communist
regimes, theory and practice
belonged to two different
worlds: that of propaganda and
that of harsh reality. The first pretended to be the universe of
utopia, good will and justice. The
second did not masquerade as
anything but a patriarchal
bureaucratic machine.
It was Lenin who stated after
the success of the Revolution
that, “In the land of the Soviets,
every housewife must be able to
rule the state.” And it was also
Lenin who announced that film
was, “the most important of the
arts.” According to the logic of
this rhetoric, Soviet cinema was
supposed to be an oasis for
women filmmakers in the male
dominated ocean of the world’s
film industry.
Actually, the beginnings were
quite promising. Although
women did not play the most
prominent roles in the policy making bodies, they were particularly visible in all kinds of artistic
activities blossoming in the years
after the Revolution. Women
painters, like Natalia Goncharova, Olga Rozanova, Lyubov Popova and Varvara Stepanova were
I
There was no other country
where women artists
achieved so much in such a
short time.
Snezny Muz, Petra Fundova (1986)
among the leaders of the avantgarde. Poet Marina Tsvetaeva
enjoyed a popularity equaled
only by Mayakovsky’s. Women
filmmakers, Esfir Shub, Lili Brik
and Olga Preobrazhenskaya,
although working in the shadow
of
Eisenstein,
Pudovkin,
Dovzhenko or Vertov, contributed
significantly to the Soviet cinema
of the 1920s.
Too Good to Last
Even if men still prevailed in
these domains, one can not deny
that there was no other country
where women artists achieved so
much in such a short time. This
was too good to last and soon
many women shared the fate of
the majority of the avant-garde
community. There was no longer
a place for progressive ideals.
Those who did not conform to
the requirements of Socialist Real-
17
ism emigrated or spent the rest
of their lives in oblivion. Many
perished during the witch hunts
of the late 1930s and early
1940s.
Vera Ermolaeva’s story epitomizes the destiny of thousands of
people, men and women, who
suffered and died only because
they happened to live in the
wrong place at the wrong time.
An abstract painter, a splendid
illustrator and a stage designer,
she was also one of the closest
allies of Kazimir Malevich in Vitebsk and Petrograd. In 1934, she
was arrested and deported
because her brother had been
involved in “suspect” political circles many years before. A progressive illness, which led to the
amputation of her legs, did not
persuade the authorities to
release her from exile in Siberia,
where she eventually died in
May 1996
1938.
festivals.
in the deeper memory of foreign
At the time when this extraorAs to my native country, it is specialists on the subject. A situdinary woman was suffering worth mentioning that a woman ation that can be blamed, at least
unspeakably in forced isolation, actually inaugurated experimen- in part, on the male-oriented prosome of her former mates from tal filmmaking in Poland. Fran- motional policies of Film Polski,
the defunct avant-garde were ciszka Themerson, together with the state run film agency. And
producing countless pictures and her husband Stefan, made seven there were always women
posters attributing new roles to short films between 1930 and behind men, writing scripts for
men and women in socialist soci- 1945. Among them she co-direct- their husband-directors, helping
ety. The representations of the ed The Eye and the Ear, one of the them as art directors, and worknew Soviet woman were mainly most interesting abstract films ing as an army of anonymous
confined to one area: agriculture. ever done. (It was actually made aides.
A woman on a tractor, with a sick- in England at the end of World
The fact is, though, that there
le, resting after
is no woman
mowing, always
director in
smiling
and
Poland who
happy. Women
has gained
did not disappear
as
much
entirely from the
recognition
public life during
as the leadthe Stalinist years.
ing male aniOne can recall
mators: LeniVera Muchina,
ca, Kijowicz,
Little Giraffe by Teresa Badzian, Poland Szczechura
Katharina by Katarzyna Latallo, Poland
one of the most
prolific producers of idealized por- War II, for the Film Unit of the Pol- or Giersz. Now, the situation is
trayals of Soviet people. It was ish Government in exile).
even worse, for with the collapse
she who sculpted the statue of
of the communist regime state
the “Worker and Collective Farm Addressing
funding for film production has
Girl,” which became the trade- Women’s Issues
dropped radically. The newly
mark of Soviet cinema. But in real
It would be unfair to say that born capitalism is not ready yet
life gender equality in the film women did not have any chance to support cultural institutions
industry no longer existed, not as animators/directors in com- and it is quite possible that it will
only under Stalin, but also in the munist Poland. The list of those never do so. As a result, the
years to come. Unfortunately, this who made significant films starts auteur form of animation is in
is particularly evident in the field with Halina Bielinska (the co- jeopardy. Not a great prospect for
of animation.
author of an excellent and inno- animators of either gender. The
None of the women anima- vative Change of Guard in 1958) outlook for other former comtors in the Soviet Union achieved and ends at Ewa Bibanska, munist countries looks very much
the international recognition whose Incomplete Portrait (1982) the same.
enjoyed by some outstanding, is one of a very few films that
The Czech Republic seems to
although not numerous, female directly addresses women’s issues. be doing the best. Among the
feature film directors, like Larisa
In between, to mention only group of animators who still manShepitko or Kira Muratova. It was some of the most important age to pursue their own ideas are
only in recent times that animat- names, are Katarzyna Latallo, an impressive number of women.
ed films made by women in Rus- Zofia Oldak, Zofia Oraczewska, In a catalogue of an exhibition of
sia (for example Tatyana Alina Maliszewska, Alina Skiba, Czechoslovak animators which
Jitkovskaya and Natalia Orlova) and Joanna Zamojdo. None of took place in Prague in 1988, 31
started to appear regularly at film them has imprinted her presence out of 76 active animators listed
18
were women. Many of them
started their careers in the 1980s,
including Lucie Dvorakova, Petra
Fundova, Michaela Pavlatova,
Milada Sukdolakova, Eva Sykorova, Zuzana Vorlickova, Sarlota
Zahradkova and Sarka Zikova.
One has to remember,
though, that women’s animation
has a strong tradition in the
Czech and Slovak republics. One
of the founders of animated film
there after WWII was Hermina
Tyrlova, a splendid puppeteer
whose international fame would
have been much greater, if she
did not devote herself entirely to
children’s films.
May 1996
Soviet Bloc countries, feminist oriented critics in the West are
inevitably surprised that so many
women directors there do not
want to be called feminists, even
if they address women’s issues. I
might suggest a possible answer
to this phenomenon.
Sixty odd years of communist
propaganda in the Soviet Union
(44 in the satellite countries) has
led to a certain distrust in words,
especially those associated with
ideologically charged social the-
There is no woman director
in Poland who has gained
as much recognition as the
leading male animators.
Expressing Their Attitudes
The common attitude in the
West that there are no important
female directors in Central and
Eastern Europe diminishes the
role of those splendid artists who,
despite obstacles, have made
their way into the industry. What
is absent, though, is the sort of
distinct, personal, almost confessional current within women’s
animation, as represented in the
U.S. by Susan Pitt, Kathy Rose,
Caroline Leaf or Emily Hubley.
The reason might be cultural: discussing problems of ones body
and soul in public in Slavic countries can embarrassing. Instead,
artists prefer to look for ways of
expressing their attitudes by more
universal metaphors.
Finally, when dealing with
women’s cinema in the former
The Etude From An Album
by Michaela Pavlatova
ories. Listening to the
postulates of
the
Polish
Women’s
League, the
only
legal
women’s
rights organization under
communism,
one could get
the impression that it did
not differ much
from the agenda of feminist
movements in the West. Representatives of the League were
regularly sent to international
conferences, where they spoke
about the equality of men and
19
women in the socialist world.
Their words were not meant to
represent reality, but to substitute
for it. And they did. The regime
was not afraid of big words and
it knew how to manipulate them.
Borrowing terminology from
post-modern discourse, one
would say that what the communist regimes did not suffer
from was a lack of “grand narrations.” In fact, there were too
many of them. At least for intellectuals who subconsciously
developed an immune system to
fight their omnipotent presence.
In the post-modern world of postcommunist societies, the feminist
vocabulary sounds to some ears
like one of these already known
narrations.
Do not be bewildered, therefore, when a Russian, or Polish,
or Hungarian filmmaker tells you:
“I am not a feminist, but ...” They
are not lesser artists just because
they say this.
Sfinga, Lucie Dvorakova (1989)
Marcin Gizycki is a Polish art historian, art critic and former Editor-InChief for Animafilm magazine. He
has taught at Rhode Island School of
Design since 1988.
May 1996
Meena and Sara:
Two Characters in Search of
a Brighter Future for Women
by Neill McKee and Christian Clark
n Eastern and
Southern Africa a
young girl figure is
about to be born
who has the potential to become as
well known as Nelson Mandela. Her
name is Sara and she
was conceived in ten
countries.
Sara is a cartoon character. She
is the product of 20
months of research
and development
work involving over
150 writers, artists,
and
researchers
from Eritrea and
Ethiopia in the
Original artwork of North, to the
UNICEF’s new Cape of Good
character, Sara.
in the
© UNICEF Hope
South. Sara, her
friends and family, and the characters and happenings in her community are also the result of discussions with over 5000 people in
villages and slums throughout this
vast region. It is their insights and
reflection which have shaped the
adventures of Sara, an adolescent
girl between 13 and 15 years of
age.
Sara has a similar beginning to
Meena, a younger girl cartoon character from South Asia. Both projects
have been launched by the United
Nations International Children’s
Emergency Fund (UNICEF) with
financial contributions from the
Government of Norway and
I
UNICEF committees in United
States, Europe and Japan. Meena
has been a joint project of UNICEF
and Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. Sara
is still looking for a corporate partner.
UNICEF recognizes the power
mass media can have in providing
a catalyst for social change. Meena
and Sara are examples of an “entereducation” strategy, which seeks to
harness the drawing power of popular entertainment to convey educational messages. These initiatives
illustrate how creative and exciting
stories can be used to promote
social issues in an appealing and
provocative way. Meena is quickly
becoming a household name and
a popular film star in South Asia. In
December 1995, she was identified
by Newsweek magazine as “one of
the actors to emerge on the world’s
stage in 1996.”
Role Models
Both Meena and Sara are uplifting role models for girls. They are
empowered girl figures who are
able to act, to ask questions and
seek solutions to the problems
which face them and their friends
and family. And their problems are
many. In South Asia and Africa,
there are many customs and traditions which affect the development
of female Children. In India, a million fetuses are detected and aborted each year simply because they
are female. In both regions there is
much more value and attention
given to the boy from in the first
hour of life and this continues
20
through childhood.
The drawing power of
popular entertainment can
convey educational
messages.
From a young age the girl must
serve male family members, care
for younger children, fetch water
and firewood, wash the clothes
and cook. Her life becomes a
“nightmare that never ends.” The
girl is often seen as someone who
is “just passing through” the household. She will get married and
move out whereas it is believed that
the boy will support his parents in
their old age.
As the girl grows, the disparities
in treatment and status are compounded. Death rates are higher
Meena and her friend Mithu
© UNICEF
among female children. When sickness strikes, male children will be
May 1996
taken to hospital
can be used to
sooner, while girls
“strike a common
have to wait to
chord” across a
the very last
diverse region.
moment, which is
Common charsometimes too
acters,
backlate.
grounds and stoIn many counries can be found
tries, fewer girls Sara and her pet monkey Zingo, shown in a victim situation requiring assistance and protection. which belong to
© UNICEF everybody’s
enter school and
more girls are “pushed out” at an multiple partner relationships all neighborhood.
early age. This disadvantage in edu- have contributed to the rapid
In creating the series, research
cational opportunities also robs the spread of HIV/AIDS. The adolescent revealed the need to remain withgirl of her chance to be a child as girl is two to seven times more like- in the realm of realism in order to
school is one of the only places ly to be HIV positive than the ado- maintain a credible message source.
where she can socialize and play lescent boy.
Therefore, Meena’s parrot, Mithu,
with other children and learn essenonly ever repeats what he has
Striking
a
Common
Chord
tial life skills such as communication,
heard and Sara’s pet monkey,
This is a negative and depress- Zingo, does not talk. She only mimnegotiation, problem solving and
ing picture. While it is possible to ics and gestures in sympathy with
conflict resolution.
Another aspect is the socializa- present the female child as a victim Sara’s emotions. Both animals are
tion process of the young girl in the requiring assistance and protection, extensions of the girls’ egos. They
home, school and wider commu- it is more important to recognize can do things which the Meena
nity. She acquires a sense of inferi- her potential as a leading agent in and Sara would like to do but
ority, resulting in a negative self-con- promoting development. In both which would be disrespectful, for
cept. It is reinforced by the way girls the Meena and Sara Communica- a girl to do in Asian or African sociand women are defined in text- tion initiatives, UNICEF decided to ety. Therefore, cultural sensitivity is
books and various media. The over- create a role model and set of com- maintained. By steering this fine line
all result is a limited perception of mon stories which would provide between reality and fantasy, these
her own capabilities and possibili- motivation for a way towards stories remain both relevant and
acceptable solutions.
ties.
exciting to the target audiences.
But how can cartoons address They are their stories. What the
In many parts of Africa the problem of teenage motherhood is such deep-rooted problems? In research revealed is that the target
endemic. Girls are often not yet viewing live action films, people in audiences don’t have a vocabulary
ready for motherhood, physically multi-ethnic environments respond for ‘cartoon’ versus “live action.” The
or psychologically, and are thrown to cultural and social cues such as Meena and Sara films are viewed
out of the educational system. Their dress, facial features, language and as stories on their situations and
situation becomes even more wor- accents, housing and vegetation lives, as opposed to the live action
rying in the context of the AIDS pan- which may alienate and distract fantasies churned out by Hollydemic, which is hitting both regions them. They may be fascinated by wood or BollyWood.
While it is possible to present the female child as a victim, it
is more important to recognize her potential as a leading
agent in promoting development.
harder than any other area of the
world. In Eastern and Southern
Africa, rape, adolescent pregnancies, female genital mutilation,
forced marriage, polygamy and
what they see but may miss the
main message or conclude that the
situations posed are “someone else’s
problem.” However, with proper
formative research, animated film
21
The Flagship Medium
Also, animated film can portray
difficult social issues and values in
sensitive, non-threatening ways,
without losing message impact. The
stories and messages provide a
“hook” into the culture without
alienating or threatening cultural
integrity. In addition, animated films
can be dubbed and produced in
A storyboard session for the
UNICEF South African Initiative.
© UNICEF
many languages at little cost, making them useful across a large population base.
In both Meena and Sara initiatives, the animated film is the “flagship” medium through which a set
of characters and core set of stories
“come to life,” capturing the attention and imagination of audiences
and providing a creative focus,
However, multi-media dissemination is essential to reach target audiences who often do not have
access to television, video or film. A
Meena radio series has been broadcast in Asia through the BBC Bangla
service and the BBC Africa Service
will broadcast a five language Sara
series beginning in June 1996. In
addition, comic books, story books,
audio cassettes, posters, users’ and
facilitators’ guides are either available or in planning.
However, films and videos have
further reach than is often assumed.
India has had satellite television with
community viewing stations since
the 1970s. There are also growing
informal channels of video distribution — associations, religious
groups and commercial outlets, for
example. Videos are shown in public places such as restaurants and
bars and “video theaters” are quickly growing in small communities.
in some countries there are mobile
film or video units owned by private firms or government.
Also in the plans for both Meena
and Sara is the merchandising of
products. In Bangladesh Meena tex-
May 1996
tiles, ceramics, dolls, writing products and greeting cards are already
being pilot marketed and educational games are planned. Such
products have the potential to
extend the reach of Sara and
Meena images and messages. They
also may have a role in fund raising, thereby sustaining the projects,
for it is recognized that changing
the societal position and view of
female children is a long-term
endeavor.
bulk of the animation to date. South
Asian artists and researchers have
increased their skills through their
involvement.
Ram Mohan and the others of
the South Asian team - Mira Aghi,
the chief researcher in New Delhi;
Rachel Carnegie, Meena’s main creative force and former coordinator;
Nuzhat Shahzadi, researcher and
trainer-disseminator based in
Bangladesh - have all contributed
to the training of African artists, writers and researchers in the Sara project. And such capacity building
remains a major goal of both projects.
The Meena and Sara initiatives
are two visible bright stars in the
African and South Asian girls’ otherwise troubled night sky. They
demonstrate how animated film
can become a force for social transformation.
A First Step
Broadcast or video viewing is
important in developing awareness
and knowledge as a first step to
behavioral change information is
provided
and
awareness
enhanced. We can also motivate
people through entertaining Program formats. However, in the
Meena and Sara episodes, an
attempt has been made to address
all behavioral change factors. The episodes are
informative and motivational, through entertaining stories which are
based on careful research
into traditional and modern values. But they also
address the life skills and
enabling environment factors which are so often
A depiction of the South African picturesque landscape
omitted change behavior
© UNICEF
or bring in children.
Finally, both initiatives have
Neil McKee is the Senior Program
involved a great deal of capacity
Communication
Officer for UNICEF’s
building. The design of the Meena
character, character models, back- Eastern and Southern Africa Regional
grounds, storyboards and post pro- Office based in Nairobi, Kenya. He is
the author of Social Mobilization
duction has all been undertaken in
and Social Marketing in Developing
South Asia under the supervision of
Communities.
Ram Mohan of Light Box Moving
Pictures, Bombay. Light Box has also
produced some of the episodes
Christian Clark, former Informafrom start to finish-h although
tion Officer in UNICEF Somalia, is
Hanna Barbera Manila-based stunow the Meena Project Coordinator
dio, Fil Cartoons has produced the
for UNICEF in Katmandu, Nepal.
22
May 1996
Women In Animation:
Changing the World:
Person by Person, Cel by Cel
by Rita Street
Rita Street, founder of Women in Animation
Marshall Armistead Photography
s my friend, veteran animator/producer Sue Kroyer says, “I’m not much of a
joiner.” Like Sue, I’ve never been
overly fond of organizations
which seems rather odd since I
founded an International organization three years ago. I’ve also
never been overly fond of the socalled Woman’s Movement,
which makes my position all the
more contradictory since the
organization I founded focuses
on women’s issues within the
industry of animation.
Let me explain. To me organizations were only entities to pay
dues to and receive newsletters
or magazines from. My ideas concerning feminism were even
more obtuse.
While I was growing up, my
mother was busy working a fulltime job and driving three hours
A
every other night to the nearest
university in order to get her master’s degree. My father and his
cronies were my life and an overwhelming influence. When Dad
said, even jokingly, that the
Women’s Movement was great
for men, “let the women do all
the work,” I agreed. Those silly,
silly women, wasn’t housework
more appropriate? I grew up
thinking like a man, or at least like
the old boys club my father
belonged to, believing I had the
right to do whatever I pleased,
whenever I pleased and more
power to me. Like a pet that
grows up isolated from its own
kind, I never realized the term
“women” would eventually mean
“me.”
In the work place, I realized
that no matter how smart, how
efficient, how dynamic I was, it
still took some extra genitals to
land a really good salary or job
that could provide me with even
a modicum of self-respect. To get
ahead, I couldn’t act like a man as
I once thought I could; I had to
think like a woman and work like
a woman. Like my mother, I had
to drive forever and work myself
to death to create even a glimmer of hope for a career.
Destroying oneself—paying
dues beyond the price of imagination—I found was and is the
only acceptable way for a woman
to succeed in the workplace.
23
Like a pet that grows up
isolated from its own kind, I
never realized the term
"women" would eventually
mean “me.”
When I finally landed a job
that I really liked, with a boss who
respected my abilities (as editor
and eventually publisher of Animation Magazine for Terry Thoren),
I realized that I still had to kill
myself in order to gain respect
from the animation community
at large. During my three year
stint with AniMag, I began to
hear other women’s stories, stories of discrimination that were
far worse than my own. As I
delved into the history of animation I found an industry that typically placed women in low paying, unsatisfying positions that
kept their artistic talents bottled
up. Female animators were
cursed with a very real glass ceiling and female executives,
although they had made it up
the ladder (mainly due to the fact
that there actually are some wonderful men in this area of entertainment with extraordinary foresight), they still had to work harder and longer than most of their
male counterparts.
On The Brink of Disaster
At the same time that I began
to understand the basic condi-
May 1996
fax to 40
women and
asked them
to meet at
my house.
About
20
women attended, representing all
areas of the
animation
Sari Gennis, Lily Tomlin and John Kricfalusi at a WIA panel on Images of Women in Animation. industry—Sue
Kroyer,
Lily
tion of many women in the pened to be working in. Names
industry, I realized that animation of prominent men came to mind, Tomlin (voice over), Libby Simon
(producer), Linda Miller (animaitself seemed to be on the brink of to sit on this panel.
disaster. At the magazine, I was
These men would, of course, tor) Donna Ravitz and Ruth Clamuniquely positioned to see the come up with many great ideas; pett (animation art), Jan Nagel
overwhelming amount of activity but after the panel ended and and Jessie Ungerleider (publiciin the industry in 1993. New the audience and press went ty), Maureen Furniss (animation
companies were sprouting up all home, would they actually take historian and publisher of Animaover the globe in every genre of action? I doubted that they tion Journal), Becky Bristow (Dean,
animation. Animation seemed to would have either the time or the California Institute of the Arts). We
be moving in a million different inclination. The only people I sat on my floor, ate cookies and
directions at once.
knew who would actually “act” discussed whether or not we
As a person pondering, I can’t on an “idea”—something not should found the organization
take the drain of energy it takes to charted, mapped, graphed, sto- now known as WIA. Of course,
go in so many different directions ryboarded, approved, budgeted, the answer to that question was
all at once, so how could an sanctified or licensed—were my an overwhelming yes.
We also firmly declared that
industry? Could animation hold women friends. And thus the
up to such a wave of activity next thought, forming what I had this would not be an organizawithout losing valuable momen- never thought to form before— tion driven by feminist blindness.
tum? Would such an upswing an organization dedicated to the To help break the glass ceiling in
cause an equally dynamic down- needs of women called Women animation for female artists, we
swing as it had in the past? I In Animation. Perhaps by work- would embrace the opposite sex
decided that this was indeed a ing together, women could make and prove that together we
danger. If the animation industry a difference for themselves, for could rise above issues of gender,
race and handicaps. We would
had no backbone, no spine if you men and for animation.
also be an organization dedicatwill to support it, how could it
ed to solidifying the world of
continue to move forward?
Perhaps by working
animation. We would study the
The idea came to me to hold
together, women could
past and promote the future. We
an industry-wide panel discussion
make a difference for
would, as Terry Thoren is so fond
regarding the future of animathemselves, for men and for
animation.
of saying, make the world a safer
tion. Animation Magazine would
place for cartoons!
invite industry heads from all over
Over the months that folthe world to begin a dialogue
lowed, a Steering Committee was
about bringing the industry A Safer Place
established to guide the organitogether, to support one another for Cartoons
no matter what style they hapIn November of 1993, I sent a zation as it moved through the
24
difficult path of establishing its
non-profit
status.
Antran
Manoogian, president of ASIFAHollywood was approached and
together he and his board voted
to make WIA a special project of
their chapter. That meant that we
could receive tax deductible
donations before receiving our
own non-profit status. It also
meant that we had a bank
account. (I would like to add here
that WIA will always be indebted
to ASIFA-Hollywood for all their
efforts to help it grow. They continue to support us in every move
we make.)
A simple mission statement
was written defining our goals
and a first general meeting was
planned. Karen Schmidt (who is
now Director of Recruiting and
Training for Warner Bros. Feature
May 1996
Tools of the Toons
Since that time, we have
grown enormously. Our general
meetings are held four times a
year and sponsored by Warner
Bros. Feature Animation. (Thanks
to both Karen Schmidt and Senior
Vice President of Operations,
Michael Laney for their support.)
These panel discussions have covered diverse topics such as development, computer animation,
licensing, production management, writing for animation and
the image of the female character in cartoons.
We have also expanded to
include many different committees that service the needs of the
membership and the needs of
the industry. The Program Committee, in addition to organizing
general meetings here in Los
years of animation at each of our
general meetings and to begin
an oral history program that
would preserve the lives and
times of these extraordinary individuals. Under Simon’s guidance
and because of her hard work,
20 women have now been interviewed on tape and/or on video.
These interviews (which continue in both Los Angeles and New
York) have been transcribed and
will soon be available to
researchers through the University of California, Los Angeles
Library.
The Communications Committee publishes a quarterly
newsletter recording the activities
of members and the organization
as a whole. The Youth & Education Committee, headed by Film
Roman’s Phyllis Craig, helps
young people make
the jump from student to professional a
reality by placing
them in intern programs at several independent and major
studios. The Independent Film Selection
Committee is dedicated to providing a
forum for the work of
independent animaRita Street (2nd from left), CalArts instructor Maureen Selwood, Faith Hubley and Calico's Jan Nagel (on far right) at
press preview hosted by WIA and KCET for the Animated Women TV series, along with two KCET representatives. tors and the Public
Services Committee is
Animation, and who was then at Angeles, has developed a series working to make a difference the
Disney) arranged a large screen- of workshops open to the public world over through the art of aniing room for our meeting. Over called the “Tools of the Toons” mation.
one hundred women showed up series. The first workshop ran last
WIA currently boasts one
at Disney Feature Animation for fall and focused on the art of chapter. Founded by the Cartoon
our first gathering which con- pitching story ideas.
Network’s Director of Programsisted of screenings of new work
On the suggestion of Sue ming, Linda Simensky, WIA-NY is
by women. We actually had to Kroyer and Libby Simon, a His- extremely active. In the next few
turn some women and men torical Committee was organized months, when the non-profit staaway at the door.
to honor women from the early tus is received for WIA Interna25
tional, Los Angeles will form its
own chapter. Other chapters
based in major cities around the
world will soon follow.
No Longer Iffy
I have learned a great deal
since I started the organization
three years ago. I am no longer
“iffy” about organizations; I love
them. At least... this one. All the
women who I have had the
opportunity to meet and work
with have caused the organization (and myself) to blossom. It
has become a thrill of mine to
sneak around the outskirts of a
crowd bubbling over with enthusiasm during the “networking”
portion of a general meeting and
hear just how well the organization is working for people. Men
and women are open and friendly and thrilled to be finding out
what is going on with friends at
other companies around town.
Members discuss problems and
offer insights. There’s even some
storytelling from the good ol’
days. It seems that barriers are
broken between people the
moment they walk in the door.
All ages attend. I’ve seen 10
year-olds and 80 year-olds sitting
May 1996
in the same row. And all ages
learn, think, remember, hope and
go home with the urge to create—whether it be a piece of tangible art or something as
ephemeral as their own spiritual
lives, everyone leaves inspired to
do what they have not yet
attempted.
And that’s what make’s a
truly great organization, I’ve
found. The people who are a
part of it and the dreams that
they find they can fulfill. I
attribute this attitude of excitement to the many women on
both coasts who make up the
current Steering Committees
and our Advisory Board. They
are all women of power, foresight and honor. With individuals like this around me, I find
it impossible to believe that I
ever scoffed at the importance
of women’s rights and women’s
issues.
Here’s to organizations,
women and men, and the future
of animation. May all support
organizations like this one help it
grow into the next century and
beyond. And here’s to not being
afraid of “joining”—sometimes it’s
just a part of a little thing called
“growing.”
For information about Women In
Animation,
send
email
to
rpstreet@aol.com or wanki@
aol.com, or write to P.O. Box 17706,
Encino, CA 91416, or call (818) 7599596.
Painting by Mary Blair, for Disney's Alice in
Wonderland, which was displayed at a
Name That Toon gallery fundraiser for WIA.
© The Walt Disney Company
Rita Street, the founder of Women
in Animation and former editor and
publisher of Animation Magazine,
is now a freelance writer based in Los
Angeles.
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26
May 1996
Women in the Animation
Industry—Some Thoughts
by Linda Simensky
Linda Simensky, The Cartoon Network’s
Director of Programming
n the animation industry, a professional association called
Women In Animation formed in
1993. Men in the business joked,
“Where’s the Men In Animation
group?,” to which the women
replied, “That’s what we call ‘The
Animation Industry.’”
Actually, there are a lot of
women in animation, and their
number has been rising. I don’t
know that there are statistics that
are readily available, but since this
is an opinion piece, my opinion is
that there are more women than
ever working in animation.
What is unusual and noteworthy, though, is that there is not an
even breakdown of tasks between
men and women. This is obvious
to the naked eye of anyone visiting
an animation studio or network
animation department. Just as an
entomologist can view the breakdown of gender roles in an ant
colony, we can analyze the animation industry the same way. The
following are some thoughts—not
on the analysis itself—but on why
we can analyze the industry that
way.
First, imagine you were attending a large party for members of
I
It is also important to look at
the motivations of people entering animation. The artisans of the
industry (more men than women)
tend to enter by first studying animation in school and then simply
getting jobs in their chosen field.
Some women have taken that
path as well, such as director Becky
Bristow, currently head of the California Institute of the Arts Character Animation program, and Nancy
Beiman, a supervising animator at
Disney. But many women, more
often than not, tend to “end up” in
the industry by one of three different paths, all not all of which
involve animation or even an initial
interest in the field.
The “different path” theory
includes the following typical job
motivations. Some women are
driven by an interest in children’s
television, of which animation
comprises a large bulk. These people could just as easily end up in
Different Paths
First, there is the history of the publishing or teaching, where
industry. While there have always many began their careers. Geralbeen women in the animation, his- dine Laybourne, formerly president
torically the more important jobs of Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite, and
have gone to men. This is as much now President of Disney/ABC
a function of the eras involved and Cable Networks, initially pursued
a career in eduof the history of
cation
and
the business.
Just as an entomologist can
entered
the
When you consider that the view the breakdown of gender media industry
entire anima- roles in an ant colony, we can with an active
tion industry analyze the animation industry interest in chilthe same way.
dren’s television.
has
been
Others simaround for less
ply aspire to
than a century,
and that for years women were work in the entertainment industry,
systematically relegated to such and have career paths that take
“lesser” jobs such as ink and paint, them through the animation
women have actually done fairly industry as well as through livewell even getting into any posi- action television and film productions in the industry over the last tion.There are also other career
paths that can lead to animation,
20 years.
the animation industry. After a
round of toasts to, say, Bob Clampett or Shamus Culhane, everyone
went off to the lavatories at the
same time. The line into the
women’s room would be comprised of a large number of network executives, studio management types ranging from producers to production assistants, color
and background designers, and
perhaps an occasional director. The
line into the men’s room would
include studio owners, business
types, directors, artists, show creators, designers, and a significant
number of other animation artists.
While this is more of an observation, it has already been established that men and women gravitate to different parts of the industry. There are a couple of theories
that are often discussed to support
this.
27
including the CD-ROM or CGI
industries, as well as graphic
design and illustration. Oddly
enough several translators of
Japanese language materials have
gone on to careers as animation
producers.
There are also those who aspire
to work in animation but cannot
animate. I offer myself as an example of this. People taking this path,
which ultimately leads them to animation, often take the same paths
noted above, but direct themselves
toward animation and are not as
interested in the other areas.
We need to understand why
girls lose interest in watching
cartoons.
What’s So Funny About
Cheese?
Whether or not there is a historical precedent for women in the
animation industry, there theoretically are no reasons for women
not to be in it now. Perhaps the
question to ask is, “Why aren’t
women as interested in animation
as men are?” Maureen Furniss
explored this in her article, “What’s
So Funny About Cheese? And
Other Dilemmas: The Nickelodeon
Television Network and Its (Female)
Animation Producers,” which can
be found in the Spring 1994 issue
of Animation Journal. She took a look
at the animated shows on Nickelodeon, particularly Doug and The
Ren & Stimpy Show, which were created and developed by men, and
how the shows’ staffs dealt with
Nickelodeon’s
management,
which was primarily women. Furniss discussed the difference in
men and women’s taste in what
was funny, and how that shaped
the animation they were doing.
The article also chronicles the problems and arguments women
encountered when opposing
humor they saw as gross, inap-
May 1996
propriate or obscure.
I think, though, to understand
this difference in taste, we need to
understand why girls lose their
interest in watching cartoons; this
seems to occur when many reach
their early teens, as they become
more interested in their personal
lives, in music and films, as well as
showing that they are “older.” It’s
a time when cartoons are associated with their younger selves. I
think girls are also driven away by
their difference in taste, which
involves less interest in watching
slapstick, violence and the maleoriented topics of most animated
fare.
There is a slightly old and out of
date theory that girls will watch
shows about boys, but boys will
not watch shows where the main
characters are girls. I disagree, as it
seems clear that everyone will
watch a clever, well-made show.
Nevertheless, this theory, along
with the feeling that girls no longer
watch cartoons after a certain age,
and the need to sell toys, has led
to many of the animated programs
being made specifically for boys.
And then the lack of interest in cartoons by women ultimately led to
the lack of women in the industry.
Many women who want to
enter the animation industry tend
either to avoid the more violent
sorts of programs, or are in network management where they
attempt to mollify the shows.
Many, particularly those who wish
to create shows, have directed
themselves more toward preschool
programming or more traditional
Disney or Disney-influenced animation.
More Room For
Self Expression
Another aspect of this is that
women pursuing careers in the
field seem more interested than
men in animation as an art form.
Thus, it is not surprising that the
area of independent filmmaking
28
seems to have more women than
men; after all, it is an area of animation which has more room for
self-expression and no real traditional hierarchy in which to fit.
It seems that as animation
becomes more and more popular,
a larger number of potential workers and executives will migrate to
animation from other fields. This
leaves us pondering how the animation industry will change in the
future, particularly with regard to
women in the industry. Will more
women enter the industry, and will
they shift over to the more maledominated jobs? Will the financial
success of animated films and television shows cause more workers
to shift from live action to animation? Will more men supplant
women in key positions in children’s television, at the networks
and at animation studios, as in the
past?
Many women tend to “end
up” in the industry by
different paths, not all of
which involve animation.
It seems clear that as more programs are made that girls like as
well as boys, such as The Simpsons,
Doug and Rugrats, there will be
more girls who will consider animation as a viable career option.
However, if the industry continues
to concentrate on animation that
will sell toys to boys, the attraction
may be less.
In the meantime, here is what
I would like to see: Female show
creators, more female directors,
and a funny cartoon with a female
lead character. After that, everything would be different.
Linda Simensky is Cartoon Network’s Director of Programming.
May 1996
Mary Ellen Bute:
Seeing Sound
by William Moritz
Mary Ellen Bute
The Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive
s with many pioneer animators, Mary Ellen Bute
is hardly known today,
primarily because her films are
not easily available in good
prints. This was not always true.
During a 25-year period, from
1934 until about 1959, the 11
abstract films she made played
in regular movie theaters
around the country, usually as
the short with a first-run prestige feature, such as Mary of
Scotland, The Barretts of Wimpole
Street, or Hans Christian Andersen—which means that millions
saw her work, many more than
most other experimental animators.
The diminutive Mary Ellen
grew up in Texas, and retained
a soft southern accent and genteel demeanor throughout her
life. She studied painting in
Texas and Philadelphia, but felt
frustrated by the inability to
wield light in a flowing time-
A
continuum. She studied
stage lighting at Yale in
an attempt to gain the
technical expertise to
create a “color organ”
which would allow her
to paint with living
light—and also haunted
the studios of electronic
genius Leo Theremin
and Thomas Wilfred
whose Clavilux instrument projected sensuous
streams of soft swirling
colors.
She was drawn into filmmaking by a collaboration with
the musician Joseph Schillinger,
who had developed an elaborate theory about musical structure, which reduced all music
to a series of mathematical formulae. Schillinger wanted to
make a film to prove that his
synchronization system worked
in illustrating music with visual
images, and Mary Ellen
undertook the project
of animating the visuals. The film was never
completed, and a still
published with an article by Schillinger in the
magazine Experimental
Cinema No. 5 (1934)
makes it clear why: the
intricate image, reminiscent of Kandinsky’s
complex
paintings,
would have taken a single animator years to
29
redraw thousands of times.
Mary Ellen continued to use
the Schillinger system in her
subsequent films, often to their
detriment, for Schillinger’s insistence on the mathematics of
musical quantities fails to deal
with musical qualities, much as
John Whitney’s later Digital Harmony theories. Many pieces of
music may share exactly the
same mathematics quantities,
but the qualities that make one
of them a memorable classic
and another rather ordinary or
forgettable involves other nonmathematical factors, such as
orchestral tone color, nuance of
mood and interpretation. In
Mary Ellen’s weakest works, like
the 1951 Color Rhapsodie, she is
betrayed precisely by this problem, using gaudily-colored, percussive images of fireworks
explosions during a soft, sensuous passage—perfectly timed
Polka Graph (1952) Mary Ellen Bute
Courtesy of William Moritz
mathematically, but unsuited to
mood and tone color.
Egg Beaters, Bracelets
and Sparklers
Mary Ellen made her own
first film, Rhythm in Light, together with Melville Webber, who
had collaborated with James
Watson on two classic liveaction experimental films,
The Fall of the House of Usher
(1928) and Lot in Sodom
(1933). Webber contributed
his experience on those
films with making models of
paper and cardboard and
filming them through such
things as mirrors and a cutglass ashtray to get multiple
parallel reflections of the
shape. The cameraman, Ted
Nemeth, who worked commercially on advertising and
documentary films, would soon
marry Mary Ellen, and worked
on all her subsequent films.
Rhythm in Light, with black-andwhite images tightly synchronized to “Anitra’s Dance” from
Grieg’s music for Peer Gynt, uses
not only Webber’s models, but
also cellophane, ping-pong
balls, egg beaters, bracelets and
sparklers to create abstract light
forms and shadows. Many of
these images are “out of focus”
or filmed reflected on a wall for
soft nuance and distortion that
conceals the origin of the
abstract apparition.
Mary Ellen made two more
similar black-and-white films,
Synchromy No. 2 (1936) and
Parabola (1938), which also are
not exactly animation, nor completely abstract in the sense of
Oskar Fischinger’s films. Syn-
May 1996
effects created with conventional stage lighting, such as
imploding or exploding circles
made by rising in or out a spotlight.
For the 1940 Spook Sport,
Mary Ellen hired Norman
McLaren (living in New York
before he went to Canada) to
draw directly on film strips the
“characters” of ghosts,
bats, etc., to synchronize
with Saint-Saëns’ Danse
Macabre. Mary Ellen kept
McLaren’s painted originals, and reused some of
the images in later films,
including
Tarantella
(1941), Color Rhapsodie
(1951) and Polka Graph
(1952), where they seem
less at home stylistically
than in their original conColor Rhapsody (1951) Mary Ellen Bute
Courtesy of William Moritz text.
Tarantella seems Mary Ellen’s
dle slow section provides a satbest film. Using an eccentric
isfying closure.
In 1931, Universal had run modern composition by Edwin
one of Oskar Fischinger’s Stud- Gershefski, Mary Ellen herself
ies as a novelty item in their animated most of the imagery,
newsreel. Mary Ellen had seen using jagged lines to choreoit, and proposed to Universal graph dissonant scales. Even
that they use one of her films the sensuous McLaren interlude
in a similar fashion. Since they is not totally out of character.
could use only two or three Another of her finest films, Pasminutes, Mary Ellen made a torale (1953), reverts to the techspecial piece, Dada, which Uni- nique of the early black-andwhite films, creating continuous
versal distributed in 1936.
flows of colored light, swirling
in various directions to mime
Working in Color
Beginning with the 1939 the multiple voices of J.S.Bach’s
Escape, Mary Ellen began to
work in color, and used more
The diminutive Mary Ellen
conventional animation for the
grew up in Texas, and
main themes in the music, but
retained a soft southern
still combining it with “special
accent and genteel
effect” backgrounds—somedemeanr throughtout her
times swirling liquids, clouds or
life.
fireworks, other times light
chromy No. 2, synchronized to
the “Evening Star” aria from
Wagner’s Tannhäuser, uses a statue of Venus to represent the
star. The effect of constant flowing forms, however, is quite
striking, especially in Parabola,
which is a bit long at nine minutes, and could well drop the
jazzy finale since the lovely mid-
30
May 1996
tube for her films seems somewhat simpler or weaker than
the forms McLaren and Hirsh
use in their films. But she makes
up for the “slinky” look of her
main figures by imaginative
backgrounds and
animation supplements. In the 1954
Abstronic,
Mary
Ellen uses her own
paintings, with a
kind of surrealist
depth perspective,
zooming in and
out in rhythmic
pulsations synched
with the beat of
“hoe down” music.
In the exciting
Spook Sport (1940) Mary Ellen Bute
Contrasts
Courtesy of William Moritz Mood
(1956, incorporating animation from a 1947 film
Mood Lyric), she created her
Combining
most complex collage of aniScience and Art
In 1954, Mary Ellen began mation and special effects,
using oscilloscope patterns to including a striking sequence of
lights
refracting
create the main “figures” in her colored
films. In her publicity, which is through glass bricks in oozing
often repeated, she claimed to soft grid patterns.
Mary Ellen made two more
be the first person to combine
“science and art” in this way, commercial shorts, a 1958 Imagand she sold her last two films ination number for the Steve
Abstronic (1954) and Mood Con- Allen television show, and a
trasts (1956) on their novelty. 1959 commercial for RCA, New
Actually, Norman McLaren used Sensations in Sound, both of
oscilloscope patterns in 1950 to which are clever, sharply edited
generate abstract images for his collages of effects from her preAround is Around, which was vious films. In 1956 she made
screened at the Festival of a live-action short The Boy Who
Britain in 1951—and described Saw Through and spent the next
in technical detail in American decade working on a live-action
Cinematographer. Hy Hirsh also feature based on James Joyce’s
used oscilloscope imagery in his Finnegan’s Wake. In the 1970s,
1951 Divertissement Rococo in his feminists “rediscovered” Mary
1953 Eneri and Come Closer. The Ellen as a pioneer woman filmsort of shapes that Mary Ellen maker, but by that time many
captured from the cathode ray of her abstract films were no
Sheep May Safely Graze. The
music’s conductor/arranger,
Leopold Stokowski, appears at
the end superimposed over the
abstract images—reminiscent of
Fantasia!
31
longer available in good prints,
and the original nitrates were
dispersed to archives in Wisconsin, Connecticut and New
York. She was still, however, celebrated justly for a major
achievement in making her
films and distributing them herself, against all odds, successfully. Mary Ellen is also quite
important as a formative influence on Norman McLaren. The
kind of titles Mary Ellen used to
preface her films, explaining
them to an average audience
as a new kind of art linking
sight and sound prefigure
McLaren’s similar audience—
friendly prefaces to his National Film Board experiments. Mary
Ellen also proudly announced
that she had used combs and
collanders and whatever else to
make the imagery in her films,
encouraging a delight in simplicity and novelty of experimentation. Surely this left its
mark on McLaren, too.
Mary Ellen Bute
Abstract Filmography
Synchronization
(1934)
Collaboration with Joseph
Schillinger and Lewis Jacobs
[paper or cel animation; lost?
incomplete?]
Rhythm in Light
(1935, b&w, 5 min.)
In collaboration with Melville
Webber.
Music:
“Anitra’s
Dance” from Grieg’s music for
Peer Gynt. Moving models with
lighting: “cellophane & ping-
May 1996
rors & lighting. [cel animation]
Spook Sport
(1940, color, 8 min.)
Music: Danse macabre by
Saint-Saëns. Cel animation
plus McLaren’s drawn-onfilm effects.
Abstronic (1954) Mary Ellen Bute
The Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive
pong balls,” sparklers, egg
beaters, bracelets & barber
poles, and some drawn animation.
Synchromy No. 2
(1936, b&w, 5 min.)
Music: “Evening Star” from
Wagner’s Tannhäuser, sung by
Reinald Werrenrath. Light
reflections from cut glass, collander, etc. “Gothic arches, a
flowering rod, and stairs recognizable.”
Dada
(1936)
3-minute short for Universal
Newsreel.
Parabola
(1938, b&w, 9 min.)
Music: Création du monde by
Darius Milhaud. Based on a
sculpture by Rutherford Boyd.
Small models and bent rods on
a turntable.
Escape
(1939, color, 5 min.)
Music: Toccata in D Minor by J.S.
Bach. Comb, cut celluloid, mir-
Tarantella
(1941, color, 5 min.)
Music by Edwin Gerschefski.
Drawn animation and cut-outs
with light effects, McLaren.
Color Rhapsodie
(1951, color, 6 min.)
Music: Hungarian Rhapsody No.
2 by Liszt. “Paint on glass, fireworks,” animation, fireworks
and clouds optically colored.
Polka Graph
(1952, color, 5 min.)
Music: “Polka” from The Age of
Gold by Shostakovich. Cel animation over graph pattern,
using Schillinger system.
cutouts and cellophane layered.
Pastorale
(1953, color, 8 min.)
Music: Sheep May Safely Graze
by J.S. Bach. “Kaleidoscope of
ever-changing shapes, colors,
forms, vapors, illuminations
and mobile perspectives.”
Abstronic
(1954, color, 7 min.)
Music: “Hoe Down” from Billy
the Kid by Aaron Copeland and
32
“Ranch House Party” by Don
Gillis. Oscilloscope patterns
over drawn backgrounds.
Mood Contrasts
(1956, color, 7 min.)
Music: “Hymn to the Sun” from
The Golden Cockerel and “Dance
of the Tumblers” from The Snow
Maiden by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Oscilloscope
over
backgrounds, including colored liquids, clouds, and grids of colored light shot through glass
bricks or cut-glass plate.
Imagination
(1958, color, 3 min.)
Collage of effects from earlier
films. [Abstract bit for Steve
Allen]
RCA: New Sensations
in Sound
(1959, color, 3 min)
Commercial. Collage of effects
from previous films.
William Mortiz teaches Animation
History at Cal Arts, and has widely
published articles on Animators. He
has also made dozens of films, and
received an American Film Institute
Grant to complete a half-hour animation film All My Lost Lovers.
May 1996
Claire Parker,
An Appreciation
lexandre
(“Alosha”)
Alexeïeff and
Claire Parker (A
Night on Bald Mountain [1933], The
Nose [1963], Pictures
at
an
Exhibition
[1972], etc.), loved
to introduce themselves as “the artist
and the animator,”
i.e., he was the one
who created the
images and she
choreographed
them.
I knew them
both for the last 11 years of
their life together; and
although I became very close
friends, I still feel it is almost
impossible to know which of
them did what.
Their working relationship
was very much like their personal relationship: happy, loving, creative and, above all
else, inextricably linked. I witnessed Alosha (a nickname
based on his family name, not
his first name) proposing certain movements to Claire,
which she faithfully executed;
and I saw her discussing (and,
on that occasion, rejecting)
the development of a scene he
had conceived.
A
90 years ago,
on August 31,
and died in Paris
on October 3,
1981. Her family
was rich, prominent and cultivated, and did
not discriminate
against her because she was a
woman.
Claire had
the freedom to
travel
anywhere,
read
The Nose (1963) by Alexandre Alexeïeff and Claire Parker
Courtesy of Cecile Starr what she wanted and associate
with who she liked. (As a
Discreet Yes, Shy No
In fact, she always main- teenager, her father decided
tained that, “Between us, he’s to introduce her to the perils
the genius.” I know that she of whiskey and got drunk.) In
did not say this out of either her twenties, like many other
love or because she was shy. American artists, writers and
Although she loved Alosha intellectuals of her generation,
very much, she was also very she left for Paris.
In Paris, she had the urge
frank; and she certainly wasn’t
shy. (Discreet, yes; shy, no.) to create, but didn’t know
But Alosha’s genius could not exactly what to do. Her curhave been expressed without rent beau , a Mexican lawyer
Claire. For it was she who also living in Paris, gave her
allowed his creativity to flour- some books illustrated by a
ish. Initially, in a very practical Monsieur Alexeïeff. She was
way with money, and later giv- immediately struck by these
ing him energy, confidence illustrations and promptly
wrote to the publisher asking
and inspiration.
Claire Parker was born in to meet the artist, so she could
Boston, Massachusetts, nearly study with him. “I figured I
33
would meet an old, dignified
man with a white beard,”
Claire recalled with a giggle,
“but [instead] I saw this tall,
brown, handsome, aristocratic 30 year old guy. Our first lesson ended on the banks of the
Seine, hand in hand; and
there was never a second
one.”
Gravures Animées
Claire was wealthy, while
Alosha, a Russian émigré, was
not; so, she decided to invest
May 1996
registered under her name,
and that the film, like all the
later ones, was signed by
both.
Claire always maintained
that the films she was most
responsible for were the advertising shorts they made
between 1935 and 1940 using
various techniques, but not
the pinscreen She directed
these films, while Alosha created the images and their collaborator Etienne Raik animated them. (It is less clear what
Although she loved Alosha very much, she was also very
frank; and she certainly wasn’t shy.
the contribution of Alexandra
de Grinevsky, Alexeïeff’s former
wife and the fourth member of
the production team, actually
was.)
Many of these films still exist
and what is most striking
about them is the way they
express the joys of color; this
may
seem
strange from
a pair of filmmakers who
preferred to
work in black
and white.
Alosha didn’t
like color in
films,
although
he
pioneered it
in the engravings he
did for boThe Nose (1963) oks. He said
by Alexandre Alexeïeff and Claire Parker
Courtesy of Cecile Starr he found it
her money into the building of
the pinscreen he conceived for
creating gravures animées (animated engravings), and into
the first film made with it: A
Night on Bald Mountain, based
on Mussorgsky’s tone poem. It
should be noted that the
patent for the pinscreen was
34
too decorative and it was
Claire who best exploited the
language of chromatism.
Claire, who spoke perfect
French (though with an American accent), mastered Russian
well enough to read Dostoevski aloud for the delight of
her husband when he was
sick. She knew the Russian
classics almost by heart. Thus,
it is not surprising that she was
able to relate so closely to
Alosha so closely when making films such films as The Nose
(from Gogol), Paintings at an
Exhibition and Three Themes
(both from Mussorgsky).
Claire Parker was a cultivated, intelligent and scholarly;
but she was always, incredibly,
charmingly sensitive and even
candid. When I asked her to
name her favorite films of all
time, she immediately said,
“The ones with Tom Mix and
his beautiful white horse!”
Giannalberto Bendazzi is a
Milan-based film historian and critic
whose own history of animation, Cartoons: One Hundred Years of
Cinema Animation, was published
in the US by Indiana University Press
and in the UK by John Libbey. His
other books on animation include
Topoline e poi (1978), Due voite
l’oceana (1983) and Il movimento
creato (1993, with Guido Michelone).
May 1996
Peaches N’ Dreams:
Henry Selick’s
James And The Giant Peach
by Wendy Jackson
“It was a tiny seed of an idea. I walked
around it, looked at it, and sniffed it
for a long time.”
—Roald Dahl
efore being adapted to the
screen, Roald Dahl’s children’s book, James and the
Giant Peach captured the imagination of several generations of readers since it was first published in
1961.
James is the story of an
orphaned boy and his dream of
going to New York City, “the place
where dreams come true,” his
parents told him, before they were
eaten by a wild rhinoceros. With
the help of some magic crocodile
tongues, the lonely little boy’s
dream turns into a fantastic adventure when he crawls inside a giant
peach inhabited by a family of
anthropomorphised insects. Obviously, this is not your typical Hollywood story, even for an animated film.
Dahl’s writing is, by its nature,
essentially macabre and outrageous—which is also what makes
it so delicious; in this, it is much
like the early (pre-Nightmare Before
B
Christmas) films of director Henry
Selick, who has now brought
Dahl’s film to the screen.
Roald Dahl turned down several movie offers for the book over
the years, because he felt that it
would be nearly impossible to
translate the story into film. But
when the late author’s widow,
Felicity, was approached by Selick,
she was so impressed with his
accomplishments in animation
that she offered him the opportunity to adapt the story for the
screen.
Director Henry Selick and the Giant Peach.
© Walt Disney Pictures
35
It lacks the saccharin
sweetness and gushy
romantic subplots one
comes to expect in Disney
films.
From his training at CalArts and
beginnings at Disney, to his years
producing award-winning commercials and MTV station ID’s,
Selick has developed an unparalleled imaginative style, making
him one of the most innovative
directors working in the animation
industry today.
As a fan of both artists’ work, I
was pleased with Selick’s adaptation, which lacks the saccharin
sweetness, unrealistic smarminess
or gushy romantic subplots one
comes to expect (and dread) in
Disney films. Karey Kirkpatrick,
who co-authored the screenplay,
noted that, “One of the big challenges in writing the script was to
stay true to the book while giving
it the stronger emotional drive that
it needed to work as a film.” There
are, of course, the usual moral
fibers woven into the story, mostly in the heartwarming but unnecessary musical score; but even the
songs are tastefully and appropri-
ately incorporated into the overall plot.
The team that brought Dahl’s
story to life on the screen have
produced a virtually seamless
blend of stop-motion animation,
computer-generated imagery
(CGI) and live-action. Selick put
together quite a crew, including
several talented artists from the
Nightmare Before Christmas production team, such as Animation
Supervisor Paul Berry, as well as
contributors with experience in
other areas, such as Visual Effects
Supervisor Nancy St. John(Babe).
Peach’s visual sophistication and
level of technical finesse far surpasses that of Nightmare, proof that
Selick has molded a production
company that has finally found its
voice.
In developing the film’s striking
visual style, Selick turned to illustrator Lane Smith, creator of such
acclaimed children’s books as Math
Curse, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, and the wonderfully wacky
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. Selick, who had long
wanted to work with Smith,
describes his style as “glowing
James and the spider.
May 1996
paintings that are just wonderful the animated world. We wanted
and filled with lots of mystery and the live-action world to be much
style. His work looks like a cousin more monochromatic and the aniof my own, only a little sweeter.” mated sequences to be rich in satSmith, a long-time fan of Dahl’s urated color and much more
writing, recalls that, “Contractual- expansive in feel.” Jessup did a
ly, I was only supposed to do 20 notable job of marrying the two
inspirational paintings and worlds by adding a sense of the
designs, but I ended up doing 50. surreal to the live-action using
It was also supposed to be just a forced-perspective sets, and a
6-month job, but I stayed on for a sense of the hyperreal to the anicouple of years just because it was mated sequences through the use
really fun.” Smith’s first experience of computer-generated effects.
working on a big screen film
“We made a decision early on,”
seems to have been a positive one Selick recalls, “that we would start
for him, as he is finally consider- our film in a very stylized and
ing developing The Stinky
Cheese Man as an animated
film.
The inspirational paintings Smith created for the
film have been published in
a Disney “storybook version”
of the book, and it’s worthwhile buying it just to see
The shark attack scene in James and The Giant Peach
Smith’s fantastic artistry. Dahl’s
family was so pleased with
Smith’s inspirational artwork that muted live-action world that
they commissioned a set of illus- would look almost like a stage play
trations for a new edition of the or an opera set. That way, when
original novel, wholly different we entered the world of animathan those used for the film.
tion, it would be more magical.
Lately, there has been a grow- By saving animation for when
ing trend of feature films combin- James enters the peach, it adds to
ing animation and live-action. The the strength of the fantasy.”
challenge they all face is how to
One of the film’s most impresbring about a unity of design. sive scenes is when James faces
Harley Jessup, Peach’s production his ultimate fear—a terrifically terdesigner, notes that, “A big issue in rifying and huge rhinoceros—
terms of production design was emerging from the clouds towards
how to blend and relate the live- him. In the book, the rhinoceros
action beginning and end with situation is inherently nonsensical
36
to begin with, and the seriousness
with which they represented it in
the film embraced its delightful
ridiculousness. This scene was
actually produced in a relatively
old-fashioned manner, with an
underwater puppet, cloud tanks
and cel animated lightning effects.
The shark scene, however,
seems rather gratuitous. What
happened to the school of real
sharks described in the book?
Although technically impressive,
the gigantic computer-generated
mechanical monster (i.e., shark)
seems to be more of a drastically
out of place World War II
metaphor than an integral part of
the story. It is a pretty long scene,
and after awhile I found myself
seeing the shark as a visual
metaphor for the overbearing
technology which is replacing traditional, organic techniques of animation.
Peaches N’ Dreams
On the other hand, the
sequence following the scene
where James is tucked into a web
bed by Miss Spider after a rowdy
round of peach-eating and
singing is something else. You
know what they say about how
eating before bed affects your
dreams? Well, don’t blink, because
what follows should make all animation fans start eating peaches at
bedtime. The dream sequence is a
daringly experimental 30 second
mini-masterpiece that employs
two-dimensional cutout anima-
May 1996
tion, much in the manner of
Selick’s Slow Bob In The Lower Dimensions (1990) done for MTV.
Another instance of Selick’s
unique visual style is reserved for
the die-hard credit-watchers. At
film will be yet another marriage
of live-action, stop-motion and
CGI.
Production on Toots will start
next summer, and in the interim,
Twitching Image animators are
The delightful insects in James and The Giant Peach
credit’s end, there’s a brief but
clever sequence in the style of his
freakish MTV Top of the Hour
spots. It features “Spike the Aunts,”
an 18th century-style mechanical
toy which plays revenge on James’
wicked aunts. A thoroughly
delightful sequence, obviously created just for the fun of it, but representative of the charm and brio
that characterizes the whole film.
What’s next for Selick and his
team of talents? As part of a threepicture deal with Miramax, Selick’s
San Francisco based production
company, Twitching Image will
create a movie version of another unusual children’s book, Toots
and the Upside-Down House by Carol
Hughes. In development now, the
37
being provided with finishing
funds to complete a handful of
animated shorts. Finally, a studio
that realizes the value of fostering
the talent and imagination of its’
individual contributors. Henry
Selick understands this concept
well; after all, his own creative
inspirations are rooted in the films
he produced independently.
Wendy Jackson is a Sales Representative for Animation World Network. Previously employed as General Manager of the International Animated Film Society’s Los Angeles
chapter (ASIFA-Hollywood), she coordinated events such as the 1995
Annie Awards and the 1996 Animation Opportunities Expo.
May 1996
All Dogs Go To Heaven 2
by Frankie Kowalski
nlike most sequels, All
Dogs Go to Heaven 2 ,
directed by Paul Sabella and Larry Lerker, is clearly
better than the 1989 Don Bluth
original. This tale of how Charlie Barkin (voiced by Charlie
Sheen) gets to go back to earth
to retrieve Gabriel’s horn, has
considerably more substance,
is certainly more comprehensible and the art direction of
Deane Taylor really captures the
essence of San Francisco. Yet,
despite its virtues, it suffers from
a problem endemic to many
studios trying to cope with a
worldwide shortage of animation artists while working with
small budgets and having big
“Disney dreams.”
All Dogs Go to Heaven 2
begins with our scoundrel
Charlie totally bored with heaven’s nothingness and yearning
for earthly adventure. Fallen
Angel Carface (Ernest Borgnine)
steals Gabriel’s Horn (without it
the gates of heaven can’t open)
and becomes a sidekick to
Satan’s helper, Red-a cat
(George Hearn). So Charlie and
Itchy (Dom DeLuise) go back to
earth to rescue the horn as well
U
as befriending an 8-year old
runaway boy, David (Adam
Wylie). Charlie is also charmed
by a sassy Irish setter Sasha La
Fleur (Sheena Easton) who follows along as if she were his
Many studios are trying to
cope with a worldwide
shortage of animation
artists while working with
small budgets and having
big “Disney Dreams”.
alter-ego. Charlie rediscovers,
through this mischance adventure, his compassionate soul
and in the end he prevails over
evil.
Writer-producers
Mark
Young and Kelly Ward should
be commended for giving the
story considerably more validity the second time around for
the original characters Charlie
Barkin, Itchy, Carface and
Annabelle (Bebe Neuwirth).
The film’s songs by Barry Mann
and Cynthia Weil revealed more
about the characters as well.
My favorite song was “Count
Me Out” performed by saavy
Sasha (Sheena Easton), as she
Andy sings in the streets of San Francisco with his new pals, Charlie
B a r k i n , I t c h y, a n d S a s h a i n A l l D o g s G o T o H e a v e n 2 .
© MGM/UA
38
makes her entrance in a canine
dive.
The original film seemed to
have suffered both from Bluth’s
inability to tell a story and a
rampant perfectionism that
often ends up making his films
more confusing than not. For
instance, if you sawAll Dogs Go
To Heaven, I think you have a
good idea of what I’m talking
about. Scenes seemed to have
been added and/or taken out
without any explanation. For
example, the girl wins lots of
money gambling with Charlie
and Itchy and buys all new sets
of clothes; then, in the very
next scene she still has her rags
on... I just don’t get it???
All Dogs Go To Heaven 2 does
display inconsistencies of a different sort. This time, as a result
of what sometimes occurs
when dealing with multiple studios around the world. At least
that’s the only way I can explain
why characters went from
opaque to transparent and
back again within the scene; or
why the colors would be bright
and vivid in one shot, only to
become overcast in the next!
I’m sorry to say that I walked
out of the theater almost thinking I needed new glasses—and
I am already very nearsighted.
I guess the only saving grace
during this task was that they
used my favorite color purple
throughout the movie.
Perhaps a good part of the
problem stems from the fact
that their main studio, Screen
Animation Ireland (Don Bluth’s
May 1996
old studio in Dublin), went out
of business and could not finish the film. As a result, MGM
had to do much more subcontracting than anticipated. The
worse part was that this happened towards the end of production, when about 90% of
the film had already been animated. Trying to finish a film
under these circumstances,
given the tight labor market
and the worldwide boom in
animation, was probably something of a nightmare.
It is for these reasons,
among others, that the Hollywood majors have invested so
heavily in building their own inhouse studios, where they can
control every aspect of the production process—despite the
extra costs involved. MGM,
which started its modest animation division only a few
years, is still recovering from its
receivership by Credit Lyonnais.
Despite all of its dilemmas,
it’s nice that MGM Animation
has entered the feature film
emporium and won’t be discouraged from further attempts
at theatrical films.
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additional information
about
various opportunities
for exposure at
Animation World
Network,
contact our
Los Angeles
office at
213.468.2554
or e-mail
any of our sales
representatives:
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wendyj@awn.com
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Frankie Kowalski is Associate Editor of Animation World Magazine
and is a regular contributor to ASIFAHollywood’s newsletter The Inbetweener.
39
Asia:
Bruce Teitelbaum
bruce@awn.com
May 1996
Cartoons On The Bay
artoons on the Bay—The
International Festival of
Animation: Films, TV Series
and Fairy Tales is the English name
of an Italian international festival
held April 15-18 in Amalfi, Italy. The
city itself is a tiny, beautiful and
colorful town on the Mediterranean coast 60 km south of
Naples. It was the festival’s first
edition and it’s artistic director, Alfio
Bastiancich ( a young veteran of
animation festivals and animation
scholarship), has pointed out the
novelty of its focus. “There is no
other festival like this,” he told The
Hollywood Reporter, “since the
other festivals, like Annecy, Ottawa
and Hiroshima, focus their
attention on auteur films, and not
so much on individual TV
production.”
Which actually is the point,
since high quality animated
entertainment for television is the
great novelty of today’s global
market, as opposed to the situation
of just 5-6 years ago, when
basically only two forms of
animation
existed
(besides
commercials): auteur films and TV
series.
Giampaolo Sodano, SACIS’
Chairman, added: “With animation
occupying 20% of the audiovisual
market and becoming a growing
trend, as of yet there had never
been a festival that analyzed and
rewarded the very best in TV
cartoons.” Sodano was the big
muscle behind the festival; his
company is the distribution branch
of the government-owned Italian
C
broadcaster RAI, and his decision in
favor of animation shows a strong
determination to get involved with
it—finally, after 30 years of absentmindedness.
Pulcinella, Pulcinella ...
There were 56 films in competition representing 14 countries;
52 more were screened in the out
of competition Showcase section.
The Golden Pulcinella for Best
Character was awarded to Italy’s
Franceso Tullio Altan for Pimpa (a
naive red spotted dog, created 20
years ago for a comic strip aimed
at children; the 1995 pilot for a TV
series is directed by Enzo D’Alò).
The other Golden Pulcinella went
to France’s Fantôme Animation
(Renato and Georges Lacroix) for
their 1995 series Insektors, as Best
Programme All Round. It is a 26 x
13’ series using 3-D computer
animation, that was honored “for
its technical innovation in computer graphics, for the beauty of
its images, for its rhythm and
editing, for its sense of humor, for
the quality of its soundtrack and
for the originality of the characters.”
High quality animated
entertainment for television
is the great novelty of
today’s global market.
The Silver Pulcinella for the Best
Programme for Infants went to
France Animation (Jean-Luc Morel,
Daniel Orgeval) for The Babalous,
40
a 65 x 5’ Franco-Canadian series.
Children’s Programme (6-12 Years)
went to Ralph Hibbert Entertainment (Graham Ralph, James
Stevenson) for The Forgotten Toys.
This was a 25 minute British TV
special that was, to this writer’s
taste, actually the best film of the
festival, masterfully crafted, tender,
sensitive, very well written and
very well designed.
Programme for Adolescents went
to France Animation (Pascal
Morelli) for Nighthood, a 26 x 26’
series starring the classic feuilleton
character Arsène Lupin. The Silver
Pulcinella for the best program for
adults went to Klasky Csupo (Eva
Almos) for Duckman, the 13 x 24’
American series. The Silver
Pulcinella for Best Family Programme went to Bruno Bozzetto
Productions (Bruno Bozzetto) for
the Spaghetti Family pilot, a
humorous description of everyday
life in a typical Italian family of
today.
Special awards were given for
graphics, to Japan’s Four Seasons
of Pepperon (a TV special
produced by NHK Educational
corporation and directed by
Mitsumosa
Anno); for animation to the UK’s
The Tale of the
Flopsy Bunnies
and Mrs. Tittle
Mouse (a special
produced by TV
Cartoons
Ltd.
and directed by
Dave
Unwin
from a tale by
Beatrix Potter);
for background
scenery to Belarus’ Home Sweet
Home (a pilot
produced
by
Validia and directed by Vitaly Bakunovic and Susan Sivachov).
The Fairy Tales section showed
previews of the forthcoming
Disney extravaganza, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (exciting, as
usual), an upcoming Italian feature,The Blue Arrow, directed by
Enzo D’Alò and designed by Palolo
Cardoni (a very promising film for
children, with nice drawings and
a very good music score by Paolo
Conte), and a cinematic version of
Prokofieff’s Peter and the Wolf,
directed and produced by George
Daugherty, with characters designed and created by Chuck
Jones (a little disappointing).
Children and Violence
During the festival, a UNESCO
sponsored conference about
children and violence was held. At
the end, some guidelines were
issued, aimed not at limiting
creativity, but “to be a challenge
to find new ways of telling stories,
catch adventures and portray a
May 1996
character.” Among these guidelines: plot conflicts should find a
positive solution in each episode
of a series; conflicts and violence
should be expressed in a hum-
orous and playful way; animated
cartoons for small children should
avoid, as much as possible, any
violence—physical or psychological, explicit or implicit; violence,
if present, should be justified by
the plot; violence shouldn’t be
presented as a viable solution for a
problem. It is true that virtually
each and every educator in
Europe is currently complaining
about violence on television, and
that it is going to be rejected in
almost all children’s programs. This
could be a problem in global
markets, as there are actual
differences among audiences. Stanford Blum,
President and CEO of the
US-based Imagination
Factory, explains that, “In
Europe, they don’t want
violence. In Japan, it’s
key. You either have to
do one type of show or
the other.”
41
Last but not least, Amalfi
brought out some good news
about Italian animation. As I noted
above, SACIS and RAI are getting
more and more involved with
animation
production
and distribution. Giuseppe Laganà is
already
at
work on a
series based
upon the popular
Italian
comic book
star, Lupo Alberto (Albert
the
Wolf);
pilots have
been commissioned from
Laganà
Insektors (Arturo
and
© Fantome
Malik), Bruno
Bozetto (The Spaghetti Family),
Maurizio Forestieri (The House of
Decius), Enzo D’Alò and Paolo
Zaniboni (Steam Rail), Pier Luigi De
Mas (Goose Pimples), Guido
Manuli (Gno Gno and Go Duck);
Manuli is also working on a project
for a comedy-horror feature film.
It is a great start for a broadcaster
that had scorned Italian animation
for 30 years—and for an industry
that has suffered for too long from
a lack of a home market.
May 1996
Cartoons On The Bay
per Giannalberto Bendazzi
artoons on the Bay è il titolo
inglese di un festival
italianissimo, ma tutto
orientato a un grande mercato
planetario: quello del disegno
animato televisivo di qualità, novità
strutturale destinata a scrivere
(come del resto già sta facendo)
un capitolo totalmente nuovo della
storia del cinema d’animazione. Al
festival diretto da Alfio Bastiancich,
che si è svolto nell’ammirevole
cornice della baia di Amalfi e che
era alla sua prima edizione,
partecipavano 56 opere in
concorso, selezionate tra fiabe,
special ed episodi di serie, in
rappresentanza di 14 nazioni.
Vincitori con il Pulcinella d’oro
sono risultata l’italiano Francesco
Tullio Altan per il miglior
personaggio (Nuove aventure della
Pimpa, 1995, serie diretta da Enzo
D’Alò) e i francesi Renato e
Georges Lacroix per la serie in
computer animation Insektors
(1995). Fra i diversi Pulcinella
d’argento spiccano il nostro Bruno
Bozetto con il “pilota” della serie La
famiglia Spaghetti (una saga ironicorealistica sulle disavventure
quotidiane di una famiglia media
italiana), il britannico Graham
Ralph con il sottile e delicato special
The Forgotten Toys (un orsac-chiotto
C
e una bambola gettati via cercano
una nuova vita e nuovi
padroncini), l’americana Eva Almos
con la serie Duckman, di grande
inventiva sia nelle immagini sia nei
testi, destinata eminentemente agli
adulti.
La sezione “fiabe” ha offerto
l’anticipazione del nuovo musical
della Disney, Il gobbo di Notre Dame
e il non meno promettente
assaggio del lungometraggio
italiano La freccia azzurra, tratto da
un racconto di Gianni Rodari e
diretto da Enzo D’Alò su disegni
(ottimi) di Paolo Cardoni e musiche
di Paolo Conte (produzione
Laterna Magica di Torino).
Si diceva della novità rappresentata dal disegno animato
televisivo di qualità. La globalizzazione dei mercati ha fatto si che
negli ultimi quattro-cinque anni il
prodotto cinetelevisivo sia stato
realizzato non più per un pubblico
limitato, “nazionale”, ma piuttosto
pensando a spettatori statunitensi,
europei, asiatici, latinoamericani
contemporaneamente. A sorpresa,
questo allargarsi dell’audience non
ha portato a un abbassamento del
denominatore comune qualitativo,
ma esattamente al contrario: a una
riqualificazione continua del
lavoro, tanto da creare una sempre
più dirompente “terza via” fra
l’animazione d’autore e quella
commerciale. L’esempio
più significativo ne è
probabilmente il progetto
“What a Cartoon” della
Hanna-Barbera, che ha
portato alla realizzazione
di brevi opere uniche
degne dei grandi classici
americani dei Tex Avery,
Chuck Jones, Friz Fre42
leng. Cartoons on the Bay ha
capito il fenomeno ed è stato la
prima manifestazione al mondo a
testimoniarlo. L’altra grande notizia
proveniente da Amalfi riguarda il
nostro Paese. Dopo decenni di
trascuratezza, la RAI e la Sacis si
stanno oggi impegnando massicciamente e direttamente nella
produzione di film d’animazione
italiani (di fatto, questo è stato un
festival “della” Sacis e del suo
presidente Giampaolo Sodano, ed
è valso come testimonianza di una
scelta di campo). Sono già completati o sono in corso di realizzazione porgetti di Bozzetto,
Manuli, Laganà, De Mas; molti altri
sono in fase di elaborazione, con
un occhio di riguardo per gli
autori-prouttori giovani. Per il
momento i dirigenti di viale Mazzini
parlano esclusivamente di opere
per ragazzi, e battono anzi molto
su questo tasto (sul quale la
conorrenza Finivest è piuttosto
sguarnita). A precisa domanda,
hanno manifestato l’intenzionne
di indirizzarsi in un secondo tempo
volontà, e zittendo il pessimismo
della ragione, questo potrebbe
essere l’inizio di una nuova era per
la storia della nostra produzione.
May 1996
Women always have plenty to pack!!
compiled by Frankie Kowalski
Cecile Starr's top 9 picks
if stranded on a desert
island...
"I've been lucky enough
to know all the mentioned
animators in person except
one (Morse), and to count
one of them (Parker)
among my close friends.
Their films reflect a wide
range of subjects and
techniques—from abstract
to sexual, from hand drawn
to electronic. By and large
each is one-of-a-kind, and
each one sparkles even
after many screenings.
Some of the films reflect the
femaleness of their creators, and some reflect the
creativeness of females. I
would be proud to have
made any one of them."
1. Galatea (1935)
silhouette cut-out
animation by Lotte
Reiniger
2. Night On Bald Mountain
(1933)
Alexander Alexeieff and
Claire Parker
3. Dwightiana (1959)
stop-motion with
baubles and doodads,
Aleksandra Korejwo's
top 10 picks
by Marie Menke
4. Abstronic (1952)
by Mary Ellen Bute
5. The Owl Who Married The
Goose (1974)
sand animation by
Caroline Leaf
6. Improvization (1977)
video animation of
dance Kei Takei, by
Doris Chase
7. Tub Film (1972)
minimual line drawing
by Mary Beams
8. Charleston Home Movie
(1980)
rotoscoping with
feeling, by Deanne
Morse
9. Permanent Wave (1969)
optical printing with
passion, by Anita
Thacher
43
"I think salt corresponds
with sand from the desert
as well."
1. Alice in Wonderland
by Walt Disney
2. One film from the Nick
Park collection—Just for
laughing
3. One film from Faith
Hubley collection--It is
the colored music for
my eyes
4. The Subject of the Picture
by George
Schwitzgebel—To
remember good
painting
5. In the Time of Angels
by David Anderson—For
my romantic soul
6. Adagio Cantabilo
by Tomaso Albinioni
7. Diver timento KV13 Presto
by Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart
8. The Flight of the Bumble
Bee
by Nikolai RimskiKorsakov
9. The Swan —For
contemplation
10. Hallelujah—For joy
May 1996
Artwork by Joanna Priestley
Linda Simensky's 10 picks
"If I were packing films for a
desert island, I'd probably have
to figure out a way to sneak an
extra 50 films to the island. I'd
also want a healthy dose of the
work of independent women
filmmakers, including Sally
Cruikshank, Joanna Priestley,
Michaela Pavlatova, Jane Aaron
and Allison Snowden."
1. The Cat Came Back
by Cordell Barker
2. Screwy Truant
by Tex Avery
3. Broken Down Film
by Osamu Tezuka
4. The Tender Tale of Cinderella
Penguin
by Janet Perlman
5. Duck Amuck
by Chuck Jones
6. Hair-Raising Hare
by Chuck Jones (or any
other of about 25 Bugs
Bunny cartoons)
7. Drawn From Memory
by Paul Fierlinger
8. Lava Lava
by Federico Vitali
9. Day-O
by Susan Brand
10.Pictures from Memory
by Nedjeljko Dragic
Nicole Salomon's 10 top
picks
1. Damon the Mower
by George Dunning
2. Windy Day
by Faith and John Hubley
3. Une Bombe par Harard
by Jean-François Laguionie
4. Tableaux d'une Exposition
by Claire Parker and
Alexandre Alexeieff
5. The Big Snit
by Richard Condic
6. Pulcinella
by Emanuelle Luzzati &
Giulio Gianini
7. To Shoot without Shooting
by Kihachiro Kawamoto
8. Kama Sutra Rides Again
by Bob Godfrey (when
cheering up is necessary)
9. Three Monks
by Ada
10. The Lion and the Song
by Bretislav Pojar
And finally, my top 10 picks
if stranded on a desert
island--including plenty of
sunscreen and (Snapple)
mango iced tea...
1. Fantasia
by Walt Disney
2. Pink Floyd The Wall
by Roger Waters, Gerald
Scarfe and Alan Parker
3. The Lady and the Tramp
by Walt Disney
4. The entire works of
Aardman Animations
5. Anything Max & Dave
Fleischer ever
made,especially the
bouncing ball Sing-A-Longs
with Ethel Merman
6. Girls Night Out
by Joanna Quinn
7. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
by Ken Hughes (United
Artists)
8. The Beany and Cecil Show
animated series by
Bob Clampett
9. Rudolph the Red Nosed
Reindeer
by Rankin-Bass Studios
10.How the Grinch Stole
Christmas
by Chuck Jones
Frankie Kowalski is Associate Editor of Animation World Magazine
and is a regular contributor to ASIFAHollywood’s newsletter The Inbetweener.
44
Saul Bass, Animator, Graphic
Designer and Filmmaker,
Dies.
Bass, who revolutionized the
design and production of feature
film credits with his innovative
design and animation concepts
died April 25, in Los Angeles, at the
age of 75. His early work on such
Otto Preminger films as Carmen
Jones andThe Man With the Golden
Arm caused a sensation in their day
and opened the market for
production of extended animated
title sequences in theatrical films.
In 1961, he married Elaine
Bakatura, who became his
collaborator on a number of
projects, including
several awardwinning
shorts.
Colossal
Gives Up
on
Commercials,
Refocuses
Efforts on
"Content."
After 20 years as a
full-service commercial
house, Colossal Pictures announced that it "focus to content development for television, feature films
and new media--as well as context
and identity design for TV,
interactive navigators, web sites
and location-based entertainment."
Concurrently, Gary Gutierrez, a cofounder with Drew Takahashi of
Colossal, announced his departure
from the company. The announcement was the latest in a number
of changes from the San Franciscobased studio, ranging from
development deals with companies
May 1996
like Walt Disney Television Animation to a major investment in
Colossal by software publisher
Quark; Gutierrez’ departure is also
the most dramatic of recent staff
changes reflecting the turmoil the
company has been going through
in recent months. The announcement that it was getting out of the
commercial business was startling,
to say the least, as it ranked as one
of the top five commercial houses
in the United States, and will lead
to substantial layoffs from one of
the Bay Area’s largest studios.
Universal Family
Entertainment and Universal
Cartoon Studios have
been folded into MCA
Television
Entertainment
(MTE).
In a move to streamline
and
consolidate
its
television operations, Bar-bara
Fisher, President of MTE, will
now add oversight of all family
entertainment activities to her
current responsibilities. As part of
the reorganization, current UFE
President Jeff Segal has entered into
a production deal with the MCA
Television Group and will continue
to develop and projects for the
company.
Cambridge Animation
Systems Debuts Animo V2
and Announces Software’s
Availability on Windows NT.
The latest upgrade to one of the
leading digital ink-and-paint
software systems was recently
announced. The new version is
said to include a new architecture
45
for greater production speed and
flexibility, a new user interface, a
computerized version of the “Xsheet,” an open system architecture
that allows users to integrate a
wide range of software into the
production environment, and a
new interactive PencilTester module. In addition, Cambridge announced that it will be shipping a
Windows NT version of its Animo
software later this year.
DreamWorks Feature
Animation at work on
El Dorado.
Dylan Kohler, co-head of
DreamWorks' technology department states that they hope to start
principal production on El Dorado
by the middle of next year. The
company is already in production
on its first animated feature, The
Prince of Egypt, and is involved with
an as yet untitled feature being
done by Pacific Data Images, which
DreamWorks recently bought a
40% stake in. It is also in
development on a fourth feature,
which has yet to get the green
light.
7th Level Teams Up With
Disney and Morgan Creek for
New Games.
This summer, 7th Level will be
coming out with new CD-ROM
games this summer in collaboration
with Disney Interactive and Morgan Creek Interactive. The former
involves a new gamepack featuring
characters from Disney's upcoming
feature, The Hunchback of Notre
Dame, while the latter is an
interactive version of Ace Ventura,
Pet Detective.
May 1996
Animation World Magazine
1996–97 Calendar
Coming in June
The Independent Spirit
The June issue will focus on the role independent
animators play in the animation industry, especially in
feature films. Watch for articles on the surreal Brothers
Quay, the marvelously wacky Bill Plympton, as well as a
look back on the career of Germany’s legendary Lotte
Reiniger. Also, director John Dilworth takes a look at the
newest in anime, Ghost in the Shell.
The Spirit of the Olympics
(July)
Anime, Anime, Anime—A Worldwide Phenomenon
International Television
(August)
(September)
Politics & Propaganda
(October)
Theme Park Animation
(November)
Interactive Animation
(December)
Animation Festivals
(January ‘97)
International Animation Industry
(February '97)
Children & Animation
(March '97)
46

magazine - Animation World Network

Transcription

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